^l!l'l!!!!!iii!!!!!i!' 


M    1  I;    I     lii        i    I  MP 

!   lit;'  'Hi      1 1    1!  M  t     1    i  I  h 


I  m     hi   t! 


!!lin'i!:iU!il' 


iliii         I'   :^ 
'  >  liili  i   IJi 


dSdirWiLD: 

■  "Ml! 


mifm-  WINSTON  •  KENILWQRT 


UC-NRLF 


a  §tuDg  of  meat  mntjc 


A  STUD Y  OF 
OSCAR  WILDE 


Walter  Winston  Kenilworth 

AUTHOR    OF    "psychic    CONTROL    THROUGH    SELF-K^^O^VLE©GE," 

"thoughts  on  things  psychic,''  "the  life 
of  the  soul,"  etc.,  etc 


4. 


R.  F.  FENNO  &  COMPANY 

18  EAST  17th  street  ::  NEW  YORK 


COPYRIGHT,  1912  BY 

R.  F.  FENNO  &  COMPANY 


A  Study  oj  Oscar  Wilde" 


f- 


CONTENTS  ^ 


PAGE 

Foreword 9 

Impressions 15 

Reflections .j  29 

Revelations 43 

Intentions 59 

Aspirations; 73 

Realizations l._ 89 

Illuminations 103 

Conclusions 121 

Afterword ;.. 137 


FOREWORD 

The  Angel  of  Death  has  already  come 
and  gone  for  the  personality  of  Oscar 
Wilde  some  years  since,  but  it  has  not,  nor 
can  it  touch  the  immortality  of  his 
thought  or  of  his  soul.  These  are  eternal, 
joyous  off-shootings  of  the  Soul  of  God. 
Earthly  judgment  may  praise  or  censure 
the  man  of  whom  this  is  written,  but  it 
cannot  interfere  with  the  judgment  of 
Him  who  wots  of  poets'  ways  even,  verily, 
as  His  Very  Own.  And  in  the  fulfill- 
ment of  things  it  has  come  to  pass  that 
the  present  generation  sanctions  the 
greatness  and  the  wisdom  of  Oscar 
Wilde,  whom  his  own  generation  failed 
to  understand.  Now  he  is  seen  to  have 
been  the  philosopher  throughout,  under 
the  happy  disguise  of  the  dramatist,  the 
artist  and  the  satirist.  And  underlying 
all  his  literature  there  is  now  recognized 

9 


FOREWORD 


to  have  been  the  personal  greatness  and 
the  personal  sincerity  of  the  man.  His 
life  proves  the  text,  "A  prophet  is  not  a 
prophet  in  his  own  land,"  and  Oscar 
Wilde  felt  himself  more  at  oneness  with 
his  nature,  it  may  be  said,  in  the  romantic 
.'itmosphere  of  France  than  in  the  conven- 
r ion-ridden  society  of  England  at  which 
he  directed  the  analytical  power  and  the 
\rit  of  his  dramatic  faculties. 

That  he  has  enriched  the  English  lan- 
;.:!iage  goes  without  saying.  That  the 
English-speaking  peoples  are  indebted  to 
him  for  this  goes,  likewise,  without  say- 


ing. In  the  light  of  a  newer  criticism 
Oscar  Wilde  will  be  seen  to  have  also  been 
the  prophet  of  the  modern  social  gospel. 
And  in  the  ^^De  Profundis'^  and  in  "The 
Sf^ul  of  Man  Under  Socialism'^  we  have 
not  only  the  moulder  of  fine  sentences, 
but  the  heart  and  very  soul  of  a  man. 
Some  have  spoken  of  Oscar  Wilde,  saying 
that  he  was  ever  the  man  of  attitudes  and, 

10 


FOREWORD 


that  lie  posed.  Verily  lie  was  that,  but 
each  attitude  was  a  poem,  a  perfect  work 
of  idealism  and  each  pose  a  masterpiece 
of  human  life,  and  each  attitude  and  each 
pose  was  of  the  genuineness  and  of  the 
greatness  of  life.  And  all  his  attitudes 
and  all  his  poses  spoke  more  widely  and 
more  beautifully  of  the  souFs  existence 
and  of  the  existence  of  an  ideal  world  and 
of  ideal  things  than  do  all  the  noisy  and 
clap-trap  formalities  of  life  as  it  is  com- 
monly lived.  And  they  spoke  also  and 
more  deeply  of  real  human  sincerity  and 
of  true  human  idealism. 

In  the  realms  of  art,  where  life  is  most 
real,  Oscar  Wilde  has  rendered  imperish- 
able service  to  his  age  in  having  assisted 
it  to  reconstruct  its  theories  regarding 
the  meaning  and  functions  of  art.  He 
read  life  through  the  beauty  and  reality 
of  art.  Art  was  even  the  medium  through 
which  he  observed  the  philosophical 
world.     The  problems  of  philosophy  he 

11 


FOREWORD 


accepted  and  interpreted  as  problems  of 
art,  and  therefore  solved  them  the  easier. 
In  poetry  Oscar  Wilde  gave  birth  to  a 
new  style  and,  above  all,  to  a  new  spirit 
and  to  a  new  method  of  treatment. 

But  this  work  is  to  serve  rather  as  an 
understanding  of  the  man  through  a  con- 
sideration of  his  literature.  It  purposes 
a  revelation  of  the  man,  and  it  purposes 
to  show  that  surmounting  all  the  great- 
ness of  any  outward  expression  was  the 
greatness  and  the  genius  of  the  man  him- 
self. It  is  the  man  who  concerns  us;  let 
this  be  in  the  nature  of  an  understanding! 

The  Author. 


12 


3fmpression0 


IMPRESSIONS 

"A  man  should  be  judged,  not  by  his  caste  or  creed, 
The  meat  he  eats,  the  vintage  that  he  drinks; 
Not  by  the  way  he  fights  or  loves  or  sins 
But  by  the  quality  of  thoughts  he  thinks." 

Like  a  great  flame  bound  by  the  dark- 
ness its  own  intensity  cannot  illumine, 
was  the  soul  of  Oscar  Wilde  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  his  own  age.  A  soul  that  stood 
alone,  dwelling  within  its  own  genius, 
living  upon  its  own  glory — that,  indeed, 
he  was.  In  what  a  great  darkness  did  he 
go  down  into  death !  And  how  true,  with 
regard  even  unto  himself,  is  that  terrible 
summary  he  made  of  the  complex  person- 
ality : 

"For  he  who  lives  more  lives  than  one 
More  deaths  than  one  must  die." 

How  strikingly  was  this  applicable  of 
his  very  own  nature!  What  lives  he  led; 
they  were  a  hundred  or  more  rolled  into 
one  burning  flame  of  personality.    Each 

15 


IMPRESSIONS 


episode  of  liis  varied  career  was,  in  itself, 
a  life.  For  within  him  was  such  sensi- 
tiveness of  soul  and  delicacy  of  response 
of  soul  that  what  is  a  day's  experience  to 
the  soul  of  average  vision  was  to  him  in- 
communicable worlds  of  pain  or  joy.  The 
poet's  nature  is  the  nature  of  a  thousand 
souls  in  one, — and  Oscar  Wilde  was  a 
poet  among  them.  To  him  the  ordinary 
sunset  was  worlds  of  flame,  and  the  shin- 
ing of  the  moon  on  any  common  night 
was,  to  him,  the  door-way  to  great  heav- 
ens in  the  spiritual  repose. 

Who  shall  gauge  the  depths  of  any  sin- 
gle soul!  Who  shall  say  of  it,  *^in  this 
motive  there  was  genius,  or  in  this  in- 
tention there  was  the  light  of  the  seven 
deaths  of  sin."  There  is  no  judge  of  these 
things  but  Divinity;  and  shall  any  man 
proclaim  himself  such  a  judge!  Who 
aspires  to  divinity,  verily  let  him  judge! 
Shall  any  man  say  unto  another,  "Yea, 
verily,  this  didst  thou  mean;  unto  this 

16 


IMPRESSIONS 


pass  liast  thou  come  in  thy  thought !"  If 
so,  indeed,  let  the  anathema  be  upon  him, 
— unless  he  be  God !  Who  is  his  brother's 
keeper  in  these  centuries  of  sin,  when 
every  man  stands  guilty  because  of  the 
Time's  own  poverty  of  soul! 

The  rascal  and  the  hypocrite  went  with 
the  publican  into  the  temple  and  they 
said,  ^'Behold,  O  assemblies  of  men,  who 
are  greater  than  we!  See  ye  not  that 
we  are  saints  I'^  And  with  folded  hands 
they  accepted  the  tithes  that  the  fools  of 
men  offered  them.  But  there  came  into 
the  temple  and  unto  these  same  assem- 
blies of  men  one  who  carried  the  fires  of 
the  Most  High  in  his  hand,  and  in  whose 
eyes  shone  worlds  of  spiritual  flame  and 
upon  whose  brow  were  written,  in  tem- 
pestuous light  the  words,  ^'Behold,  I  am 
the  spokesman  of  the  creation  of  Godl" 
But  these  assemblies  of  men  who  live  on 
small  thoughts  and  petty  standards  of 
things  cried  out :    ^'Get  thee  gone !"    'And 

17 


IMPRESSIONS 


therewith  they  took  up  the  sacred  vessels 
of  the  temple  and  the  furniture  thereof 
and  they  cast  them  upon  the  spokesman 
of  God  and  he  fell  in  that  place,  and  the 
world  cried  out  joyously,  "Behold,  he  is 
dead !'' 

Indeed,  he  of  whom  this  is  written  was 
a  spokesman  of  God,  for  is  not  every  poet 
the  spokesman  of  God!  And  what  shall 
we  say  of  great  poets!  Shall  they  be 
judged  by  those  standards  that  men  set 
up — and  yet,  though  having  set  them  up 
in  the  public  highways  of  their  thought, 
nevertheless  defile  them  for  the  man  who 
can  ^'ajford/'  and  thus  escape.  O  terrible, 
diabolically  terrible  are  the  standards  of 
our  times!  Who  are  the  judges  of  men? 
Aye,  they  who  seem  pious,  but  within 
themselves  are  cess-pools  of  iniquity. 
They  wear  the  garments  of  great  piety, 
but  their  souls  are  leperous.  Aye,  damn 
the  smallness  of  men !  O  for  that  Super- 
Man  of  whom  great  Friederich  Nietschze 

18 


IMPRESSIONS 


dreamed !  But  then  these  pious  men  and 
these  same  assemblies  of  man-fools  pro- 
claimed this  arch-apostle  of  the  New  Age 
a  fool  I  Shall  the  soul  have  any  chance  in 
the  kingdom  of  the  judges  of  men! 

Behold  a  great  wave  of  light  came  upon 
the  world,  and  so  great  was  the  light  that 
men  perceived  it  as  darkness,  but  what 
cares  the  light  for  the  blindness  of  the 
eves  of  men  I  Every  poet  is  a  member  of 
that  body  of  greater  things  for  whicli 
Christ  sacrificed  himself  upon  the  cross 
and  for  which  Shelley  wrote  his  songs. 
The  Christs  alone  have  compassion  and 
they  of  their  making, — the  poets,  the  ar- 
tists, the  musicians, — and  this  because 
their  vision  is  of  things  beyond  the  com- 
mon understanding.  What  shall  trades- 
people know  of  the  Sun !  What  shall  the 
weavers  of  cloth  know  of  the  Weavers  of 
Dreams!  Shall  the  poet  make  apologies 
to  men !  The  embodiment  of  his  person- 
ality in  the  poetry  he  bequeathes  to  the 

19 


IMPRESSIONS 


world, — is    that    not    the    explanation! 
What  need  for  apologies! 

Oscar  Wilde  saw  deep  into  the  eyes  of 
life,  and  for  this  reason  he  held  with  all 
philosophers  that  life  must  be  lived  as 
one  finds  it.  And  shall  any  man  take 
credit  unto  himself  for  the  blood  that  is 
in  his  veins  because  he  has  no  tendency 
to  certain  lines  of  life!  Let  the  race 
blame  the  race,  but  let  no  man  blame  an- 
other! In  the  great  economy  of  nature, 
morality  is  an  episode.  It  is  the  rut  into 
which  all  average  men  fall.  There  is  still 
a  greater  vision — and  that  is  of  the  soul. 
Who  has  seen  the  soul,  is  he  not  the  king 
among  his  fellows,  is  he  not  the  man 
among  men !  Whosoever  has  entered  into 
his  own  soul,  like  the  sun  enters  a  mass 
of  clouds,  or  like  a  lion  enters  the  forest, 
or  like  an  elephant  enters  the  intermin- 
able jungle — let  the  world  beware  whether 
it  stigmatizes  him  either  "good''  or  "bad." 
For  what  is  goodness  but  a  common  deter- 

20 


IMPRESSIONS 


mination  to  leave  hands  off  certain  cus- 
toms that  are  not  "respectable."  What 
is  "respectable"  in  London-town  may  not 
be  "respectable"  in  Baloochistan ;  or  what 
was  "respectable"  in  the  world  of  Pericles 
or  Plato  may  not  be  "respectable"  in  the 
world  of  trade-chasing  Manchester.  But 
it  is  not  the  fault  of  Baloochistan,  al- 
though in  our  conceit  we  may  call  Baloo- 
chistan barbaric ;  nor  yet  is  it  the  fault  of 
Pericles  or  Plato,  although  in  our  pre- 
sumptuous pride  we  claim  we  have  tran- 
scended these  kings  in  thought. 

"Respectability"  is  what  one's  fore- 
fathers may  have  done  ten  centuries  ago, 
or  it  may  be  what  average  people  call 
"virtue."  But  shall  any  man  be  limited 
down  to  the  thought  of  his  great,  great 
ancestors,  or  be  pent  up  in  the  narrow 
prison-house  of  the  opinion  of  the  crowd ! 
In  this  mess  of  a  world,  there  is  only  one 
thing  that  is  "respectable"— and  everyone 
is  quite  agreed  to  this — and  that  is  might, 

21 


IMPRESSIONS 


It  is  might  that  makes  "respectable'^  the 
outrages  of  the  Congo,  because  their  per- 
petrator lives  in  a  king's  palace  and  wears 
a  king's  livery.  It  is  might  that  excuses 
the  animality  of  multi-millionaires  and 
excuses  their  heinous  crimes  on  the  plea 
of  "eccentricities."  In  international  af- 
fairs the  word  "respectability"  is  second- 
cousin  to  a  cannon-ball.  In  private  af* 
fairs  "respectability"  covers  a  host  of 
secret  sins,  because  a  man  has  money. 

Who  is  not  "the  sinner?"  Said  a  great 
man,  "A  man  has  his  evil  deeds  quite  in 
common  with  the  rest  of  mankind,  but 
his  virtues  stand  out  separately,  and  it 
is  by  his  virtues  that  he  should  be 
judged."  And  it  is  by  the  glory  of  the 
light  it  sheds  that  genius  should  be 
judged.  And  of  them  that  are  dead  in 
the  line  of  genius  and  sanctity  what  trag- 
edies in  sin  might  have  been  enacted.  But 
the  centuries  have  clothed  their  sins  in 
deep    forgottenness  and    only  the    light 

22 


IMPRESSIONS 


stands  forth.  But  that  is  as  it  should  be. 
For  shall  a  man  gloat  constantly  and  for- 
ever over  the  sins  of  his  fellow !  It  is  the 
sinner  who  sees  the  sin — and  for  that  mat- 
ter the  whole  world  is  a  sinner. 

Slow  is  the  recognition  of  the  world! 
Before  it  praises,  it  must  erstwhile  have 
blamed.  It  has  always  the  nature  of  the 
beggar  who  takes  without  thanks.  In 
fact,  in  most  instances,  it  is  like  a  thief 
who  comes  in  the  night  and  robs  genius 
of  its  merit  and  then  turns  accuser  on 
genius  because  its  capacity  to  give  has 
been  exhausted. 

Genius,  alone,  is  possessed  of  vision, 
but  for  that  reason  must  genius  suffer. 
The  genius  is  always  of  the  temperament 
of  the  redeemer.  He  makes  the  world  see 
its  own  shams.  He  makes  it  conscious  of 
its  own  behavior.  He  makes  it  aware  of 
its  own  limitations.  And  because  of  this 
must  genius  be  crucified  by  the  sons  of 
men,  even  as  Christ  was  nailed  to  the 

23 


IMPRESSIONS 


cross.  Does  a  uew  world-ghost  make  it- 
self present  with  maukiud,  like  Wagner, 
it  is  despised  because  of  the  greatness  of 
its  message.  And  for  the  "eccentricities'^ 
of  genius  let  the  race  blame  the  race,  even 
as  it  becomes  morally  blind  in  the  ability 
to  find  sin  under  a  cloth  of  gold. 

There  were  certain  wise  men  who  had 
taken  up  their  abode  in  the  compound  of 
a  temple,  but  seeing  that  men  pursued 
them,  they  retreated  into  a  forest,  where 
they  lived  upon  their  thoughts,  like  the 
mountains  stand  upon  their  base.  But 
the  foolishness  of  men  pursued  them  still. 
There  were  those  who  came  unto  these 
wise  men,  after  they  had  discovered  their 
hermitage.  But  the  wise  men  saw  them 
not  because  they  had  plunged  into  eternal 
meditation.  But  these  foolish  men  caught 
hold  of  the  sages  and  spoke  unto  them, 
"Evil  men,  why  have  you  deserted  socie- 
ty?'' And  then  these  same  wise  men 
turned    upon    their   questioners    like    a 

24 


IMPRESSIONS 


mountain  of  fire  and  said,  "Because  so- 
ciety sees  in  little  ways  and  can  only  see 
conventions." 

But  these  foolish  men  could  not  under- 
stand and  they  called  a  multitude  of  such, 
like  unto  themselves,  and  they  cast  the 
wise  men  into  a  foul  dungeon  where  they 
perished, — but  with  them,  likewise,  per- 
ished their  wisdom,  so  far  as  this  foolish 
world  goes. 

So  did  the  foolish  men  of  the  world 
come  unto  Oscar  Wilde.  They  said,  "Be- 
hold, thou  art  a  sinner  I  And  we,  who  are 
not  like  God,  condemn  the  sinner  and  not 
the  sin.'-  Therefore  and  in  that  hour  they 
cast  him  into  a  prison-house  and  mur- 
dered his  soul. 

"And  every  human  heart  that  breaks, 
In  prison-cell  or  yard, 
Is  as  that  broken  box  that  gave 
Its   treasure  to  the  lord, 
And   filled   the   unclean   leper's   house 
With  the  scent  of  costliest  nard." 

It  is  gone  some  years  now — the  soul  of 
25 


niPKESSlOXS 


Oscar  Wilde,  escaping  from  the  worn-out 
ibodj  that  suffered  the  tortures  of  seven 
hells  before  it  sunk  down  into  death.  Now 
the  world  is  kinder.  It  has  allowed  his 
hooks  to  be  published.  It  has  allowed  his 
plajs  to  be  staged.  It  has  seen  wisdom  in 
his  essays  and  learning  in  his  art.  Above 
all,  it  has  seen  a  soul  in  the  garment  of 
his  poetry. 


I 


26 


laeflcctions 


REFLECTIONS 

Life  is,  after  all,  an  experiment.  Each 
man  has  his  methods,  and  they  are  his 
own,  and  he  alone  understands  them.  He 
cannot  communicate  unto  any  other  the 
subtle  distinctions  of  his  personality, 
those  subtle  shades  of  his  feeling,  that 
make  him  act  in  accordance  with  the  in- 
stinct of  certain  moods.  From  what 
does  a  poem  come?  Is  it  a  sub-conscious 
sensing  of  finer  shades  of  physical  or 
spiritual  reality?  Does  all  poetry  arise 
from  the  depths  of  the  soul,  just  as  the 
Sistine  Madonna  appeared  to  Raphael 
before  he  embodied  its  spiritual  beauty 
and  spiritual  appeal  and  the  gentle  lofti- 
ness of  the  Christ-child  to  canvas? 

In  the  poet,  nature  expresses  herself 
more  fully.  The  poet  is  in  closer  spirit- 
ual relationship  to  the  divine  sentiency 
w^hich  is  nature.    The  most  heightened  in- 

29 


REFLECTIONS 


spiration,  the  most  brilliant  flashes  of 
insight,  the  most  luminous  penetration 
into  the  heart  of  things — are  of  the  soul 
of  the  poet.  His  tread  is  light.  His  per- 
sonality moves  on  swiftly  in  the  direction 
of  ideal  vision,  just  as  the  feet  of  the  lover 
are  quickened  with  speed  by  the  thought 
or  the  hope  of  meeting  with  the  beloved. 

The  world  speaks  to  the  poet  as  an 
oracle  to  its  priest.  It  speaks  monstrous 
realities  to  him.  It  initiates  him  into 
the  very  soul  of  itself.  It  leads  him 
through  ethereal  forms  of  consciousness, 
into  the  splendid  portico  of  its  inner 
temple.  Nature  is  God,  and  the  poet  is 
the  priest  of  God.  He  has  anointed  of 
the  Lord,  Who  is  nature.  Upon  his  soul 
is  the  ineffaceable  mark  of  priesthood; 
and  nature  has  placed  upon  his  lips  the 
seals  of  prophecy  and  eloquent  insight. 

The  same  power  that  causes  the  sun  to 
set,  causes  the  inspiration,  the  vision  of 
the  poet,     Indissolubly  associated  with 

30 


REFLECTIONS 


the  very  spiritual  essence  of  life  is  the 
lieart-throbbings  of  the  poet's  career.  He 
is  as  much  a  glory  as  the  glories  he  in- 
terprets. His  life  affords  as  much  of 
vision,  as  he  himself  is  possessed.  In 
his  life  the  spectator  may  read  Apocal- 
yptic realities.  For  this  reason  should 
the  world  reflect  for  a  long,  long  period 
of  time,  before  it  consigns  any  priest  of 
poetry,  any  priest  of  nature  to  the  silence 
and  the  shame  and  the  inquities  of  the 
house  of  shame — a  prison. 
I  It  is  incalculable  ingratitude  to  put  be- 
hind the  prison  bars  a  soul  that  has 
dreamed  larger  realities  into  the  life  of 
man.  However  he  may  sin,  the  sin  of 
torturing  his  soul  is  immeasurably  great- 
er. And  poor  indeed,  is  the  recompense 
of  a  tardy  appreciation.  Shall  long-de- 
ferred praise  be  given,  when  the  ears  of 
him  who  has  admittedly  deserved  praise 
have  gone  to  ashes! 

Each  man  pays  for  his  own  fault ;  and 
31 


REFLECTIONS 


the  most  awful  penalty  is  the  conscious- 
ness of  fault.  How  deeply  did  this  priest 
of  poetry,  of  whom  this  is  written,  be- 
come conscious  of  his  own  woe;  and  yet, 
underlying  whatever  sense  of  woe  he 
might  have  felt,  was  the  triumphant  con- 
sciousness that  he  was  divinely  a  poet. 
He  felt  his  own  greatness.  TMien  the 
whole  world  accursed  him,  he  was  stag- 
gered. Yet,  in  the  terrible  confinement  of 
those  prison-months  when,  as  he  says : 

"We  tore  the  tarry  rope  to  shreds 
With  blunt   and  bleeding  nails ; 
We  rubbed  the  doors  and  scrubbed  the  floors, 
And  cleaned  the  shining  rails 
And  rank  by  rank,  we  soaped  the  plank 
And  clattered  with  the  pails." 

yet,  in  those  terrible  hours  we  have 
glimpses  of  his  resoluteness  of  soul.  We 
find  him  heart-broken  indeed,  but  never- 
theless conscious  that  his  life  had  been  a 
mission  and  a  message.  As  a  person,  he 
had  his  confessions  and  his  regrets,  but 
as  a  man  with  a  message,  he  had  no  apolo- 

32 


REFLECTIONS 


gies,  nor  confessions,  nor  regrets.  He 
was  a  man  of  his  age  and  he  knew  what 
brooding  his  own  sonl  had  experienced, 
so  that  man  might  have  the  glory  of  a 
new  vision  from  the  very  depth  of  his 
thought. 

Some,  whose  spiritual  sight  is  blind, 
have  spoken  of  his  personal  testimony  in 
^'De  Profundis'^  as  insincere.  They  dared 
say,  that  even  when  in  the  despair  of  his 
prison  experience,  ^^he  was  posing.'^  Can  a 
man  pose  when  in  physical  pain?  Can  he 
smile  when  he  is  tortured?  It  may  be; 
but  then  he  is  like  one  of  the  Christian 
martyrs, — who  sees  the  glory  of  God 
awaiting  him  and  the  gate-ways  of  Para- 
dise open  to  receive  him.  Can  a  man  be 
glad  in  the  house  of  shame,  which  is  the 
prison ;  can  he  be  merry  when  his  soul  is 
tortured?  Can  he  be  "artistic"  when  he 
is  mad  with  pain?  Can  he  "pose"  when 
the  whole  world  is  watching  his  agony, 
when  he  finds  himself  deserted  by  every 

33 


REFLECTIONS 


man — standing    entirely    alone    and    in 
shame? 

Dastard  is  such  an  aceustation  of  in- 
sincerity against  the  soul  of  Oscar  Wilde. 
Unspeakably  mean  is  such  an  analysis 
of  the  soul  of  any  man,  but  of  the  soul  of 
a  sensitive  poet,  whose  whole  thought  is 
attuned  to  worlds  of  pain  to  which  the 
common  man  is  a  stranger  no  words  can 
describe  the  meanness  from  which  such 
calumny  proceeds.  Or  else  if  it  is  not 
meanness,  it  is  most  assuredly,  to  say  the 
least,  criminal  thoughtlessness.  To  turn 
a  happy  phrase,  to  make  a  clever  remark, 
to  be  regarded  as  a  "remarkable"  ana- 
lyzer of  the  soul  of  a  poet  need  one  go  to 
such  criminal  lengths? 

Those  who  knew  of  Oscar  Wilde  in  his 
last  days — and  they  were  few^  indeed — 
know  how  spiritual  his  nature  had  be- 
come. His  whole  personality  had  be- 
come transfigured.  Out  of  the  hell  of  his 
misfortune  he  emerged, — dead  and  for- 

34 


EEFLECTIOXS 


gotten  to  the  world,  but  lie  lived  in  God, 
having  for  his  earthly  companions  only 
his  own  soul  and  his  own  thought.  For 
him  it  was  Vita  Xuova,  the  Xew  Life. 
He  had  left  behind  him  all  the  traffic  and 
the  accusation  of  the  world,  ill  the  calum- 
ny, all  the  stupid  commiseration,  as  well, 
and  stood  on  the  foundation-ground  of 
his  own  soul.  His  poem  ^'Vita  Nuova'^ 
is  the  key  to  worlds  of  understanding,  so 
applicable  is  it  to  his  own  cause : 

"I  stood  by  the  unvintageable  sea 
Till   the  wet  waves  drenched   face  and  hair  with 

spra}-, 
The  long  red  fires  of  the  dying  day 
Burned  in  the  west;  the  wind  piped  drearily; 
And  to  the  land  the  clamorous  gulls  did  flee : 
'Alas  !'  I  cried,  'my  life  is   full  of  pain, 
And  who  can  garner  fruit  or  golden  grain, 
From  these  waste  fields  which  travail  ceaselessly!' 
My  nets  gaped  wide  with  many  a  break  and  flaw 
Nathless  I  threw  them  as  my  final  cast 
Into  the  sea,  and  waited  for  the  end. 
When  lo !  a  sudden  glory !  and  I  saw 
From  the  black  waters  of  my  tortured  past 
The  argent  splendour   of  white  limbs   ascend !" 

Here  is  the  self-revealed  soul  of  Oscar 
Wilde,  weary  with  the  pain  of  the  world, 

35 


REFLECTIONS 


disconsolate,  grieved  and  in  despair, — 
and  yet,  witlial,  a  surprisingly  joyous 
consciousness  that  liis  life  was  not  a  fail- 
ure, tliat  lie  had  fulfilled  a  task,  that  he 
had  carried  out  a  mission,  that  he  had 
given  of  that  of  which  he  was  possessed, 
that  he  was  "right''  with  himself  and  with 
God. 

It  became  quite  true  of  him  at  the  end 
— that  he  had  come  to  know  happiness 
within  himself.  He  once  remarked,  "A 
man  who  is  master  of  himself  can  end  a 
sorrow  as  easily  as  he  can  invent  a  pleas- 
ure.'' This  was  true  of  him.  Sorrow  had 
made  him  ten  times  a  thousand  times 
over  the  master  of  himself.  Pain  makes 
everyone  the  master  of  himself,  and  the 
pain  that  was  so  mercilessly  heaped  upon 
Oscar  Wilde  made  him  conscious  of  many 
spiritual  facts.  He  became  deep.  For- 
merly he  had  thought  lightly  of  religion, 
but  in  the  end,  w^hen  he  stood  alone,  it 
was  with  God  that  he  sought  peace.     In 

36 


REFLECTIONS 


tlie  end,  wlien  the  world  had  left  him, 
God  alone  was  with  him.  In  the  end  he 
had  overcome  both  the  pleasure  and  the 
pain  of  life.  His  last  illness  brought 
agonies  of  suffering,  but  he  had  learned 
the  uses  of  pain.  He  had  become  deep; 
and  a  strange  sweetness  of  disposition,  a 
strange  reconciliation  with  sorrow  made 
life  possible  for  him. 

In  the  end  he  was  more  the  philosopher 
than  the  artist.  The  joyous  energy  that 
characterizes  all  his  earlier  writings,  the 
evident  sense  of  pleasure  and  power  that 
mark  his  dramas,  with  their  telling  anal: 
ysis  of  human  nature, — all  these  left  him 
in  theTiour  of  pain,  and  he  became  the 
student  of  the  Real.  The  artist  was  trans- 
figured into  the  philosopher.  And  after 
all,  perhaps  the  whole  task  of  his  bitter 
experience  was  to  teach  himself  that  he 
was  more  the  philosopher  than  the  artist, 
although  he  himself  disclaimed  that  he 
was  the   serious   observer   that   philoso- 

37 


REFLECTIONS 


pliers  are.  It  made  liim  realize  that  in- 
sight is  deeper  than  art,  that  the  intensi- 
fied artistic  consciousness  and  vision  were 
far  superior  to  any  artistic  expression. 

His  prison  experience  had  taught  him 
many  things,  among  other  things  that, 
"Prison  regulations  may  enforce  ^plain 
living,'  but  cannot  prevent  ^high  think- 
ing,' nor  in  any  way  limit  or  contract  the 
freedom  of  a  man's  soul."  This  is  the  tri- 
umph of  the  soul  of  Oscar  Wilde  couched 
in  as  many  words.  The  sorrow,  the  shame, 
the  deprivations,  the  hardships  of  prison 
could  not  stifle  his  soul;  they  could  not 
kill  in  him  the  soaring  of  thought  or  the 
vision  of  great  ideals.  He  was  hurt, 
grievously  hurt.  The  soul  of  him  saw  the 
depths  of  pain;  and  yet  his  vision  was 
the  steadier  and  the  surer  and  the  deeper 
because  of  it. 

'Tain  is  the  Lord  of  this  world,  nor  is 
there  any  one  who  escapes  from  its  net," 
he  said,  and  he  spoke  truthfully.     But 

38 


REFLECTIONS 


the  fires  of  pain,  the  fires  of  human  agony 
make  the  greatness  of  man.  It  made  the 
greatness  of  Oscar  Wilde,  and,  withal, 
a  greatness  far  beyond  that  of  his  poetry, 
far  beyond  that  of  his  prose,  far  beyond 
that  of  his  art, — the  greatness  of  the  man 

HIMSELF. 


'39 


Ketielations 


REVELATIONS 

If  Oscar  Wilde  had  a  message, — then, 
indeed,  his  very  life  is  a  revelation.  He 
walked  as  a  god  through  the  common- 
placeness  of  our  age.  He  scrutinized  so-  y 
ciety  and  the  culture  of  the  times  as  a 
connoisseur.  To  him  life  was  not  com- 
plex. It  was  simple,  and  he  understood 
it  as  an  old  man  understands  a  child;  it 
was  a  childish  affair  to  him.  But  behind 
all  his  criticism  and  all  his  witticism  was 
an  element  of  spiritual  understanding 
and  a  genuine,  great  compassion.  His 
views  on  the  doctrines  of  socialism  came 
as  the  result  of  his  study  of  the  stifling 
conditions  to  self-consciousness  and  self- 
expression  with  which  the  poor  are  bur- 
dened. Behind  his  gay  expression  was 
the  whole  vision  of  this  ^'world  of  pain." 
In  fact  he  declared  himself  to  be  the 
prophet  of  pain.     What  more  eloquent 

43 


KEVELATIONS 


i- 


testimony  is  there  to  the  innate  worthi- 
ness of  him  than  his  -own  statement,  ^'I 
shall  be  an  enigma  to  the  world  of 
Pleasure,  but  a  mouthpiece  for  the  world 
of  Pain." 

How  touching  in  its  deep  consciousness 
-of  human  life  is  that  fine  saying  of  his 
which  shows  to  us  the  tragedies  of  the 
poor,  "The  real  tragedy  of  the  poor  is 
that  they  can  afford  nothing  but  self- 
denial."  Beneath  the  garment  of  his 
penetrating  witticisms  are  enormous  so- 
cial and  spiritual  realities,  proving  the 
man  to  have  been  possessed  of  keen  spir- 
itual vision  and  of  an  illuminated  under- 
standing of  the  problems  of  human  so- 
ciety. And,  best  of  all,  as  the  foundation- 
ground  of  all  his  delightful  literature  is 
a  heart-throbbing  with  the  world's  suf- 
fering. 

He  was  the  teacher  of  great  moral 
truths  under  the  covering  of  a  seeming- 
ly joyous  indifference.  He  smiled  at  the 
i  44 


REVELATIOXS 


world's  woe  and  the  world's  mistakes, 
but  in  the  background — though,  it  may 
be,  even  he  himself  was  not  always 
fully  conscious  of  it — was  his  oneness 
with  pain  and  woe  in  all  forms.  It 
was  pain  for  him  to  find  himself  iso- 
lated in  his  realization;  it  was  pain 
for  him  to  find  none  conscious  of  the 
same  great  realities  in  art  of  which  he 
was  so  magnificently  conscious.  It  was 
pain  for  him  to  find  himself  misunder- 
stood at  all  angles  of  his  message.  And 
he  suffered  pain  because  of  the  very  big- 
ness of  his  ideas  for  which  he  stood.  The 
most  advanced  social  outlook  was  his; 
and  for  this  he  walked  through  worlds 
of  pain,  if  only  because  to  represent  the 
highest  thought  inevitably  means  to  be 
misunderstood  and  decried.  It  was  only 
that  grand  indifference  to  all  things 
which  supported  him  in  the  hours  of  his 
intellectual  solitude.  He  stood  in  a  class 
by  himself,  and  his  greatest  friend  was 

45 


REVELATIONS 


that  ^^exquisiteness"  within  his  own 
nature  which  responded  to  the  full  stim- 
ulus of  the  greatness  of  his  own  person- 
ality. 

Oscar  Wilde,  if  anything,  was  real,  and 
because  he  was  so  intensely  real,  was  he 
misunderstood.  To  be  great  is  to  stand 
alone ;  to  have  a  glorious  vision  is  to  stand 
alone  and,  as  he  himself  said,  "To  be 
great  is  to  be  misunderstood."  Great- 
ness inevitably  brings  misunderstanding, 
for  those  w^ho  misunderstand  greatness 
are  always  in  the  majority.  He  never 
sought  the  approval  of  the  many.  At  one 
time  he  remarked,  "If  my  work  pleases 
the  few  I  am  gratified.  If  it  does  not,  it 
causes  me  no  pain.  As  for  the  mob,  I 
have  no  desire  to  be  a  popular  novelist. 
It  is  far  too  easy.''  There  is  the  fineness 
of  the  man,  the  grandeur  of  the  conscious- 
ness that  he  is  alone,  and  that  if  only  the 
few  understand  and  accept  him,  well  and 
good.     His  consciousness  was  as  perfect 

46 


REVELATIONS 


as  a  perfect  work  of  art ;  and  lie  knew  of 
liimself,  just  as  few  appreciate  that  which 
is  perfect  would  few  come  to  know  him. 
And  in  this  his  self-pride  was  justified. 
"Conceit  is  the  privilege  of  the  creative," 
he  writes. 

Oscar  Wilde  uncovered  the  shame  and 
the  sham  of  the  "unselfishness"  of  which 
the  age  prides  itself.  He  saw  human 
nature  as  it  is,  or  as  it  would  be,  and  in 
both  cases  he  saw  it  as  bad.  But  he  took 
human  nature,  so  far  as  he  himself  was 
concerned,  and  made  spiritual  realities  of 
its  very  limitations.  He  was  selfish  be- 
cause he  realized,  as  all  men  realize, 
though  all  men  are  silent  about  it,  that 
the  world  is  selfish.  But  he  dignified,  it 
may  be  said,  spiritualized  the  meaning. 
He  put  it — that  to  live  for  one's  self  is  to 
live  for  others  as  well,  and  that  if  one  can 
be  true  to  his  own  personal  vision  and 
intensify  his  own  personal  insight  he 
helps  others  thereby  in  a  more  real  and  a 

47 


REVELATIONS 


more  earnest  sense  than  if  lie  were  tlie 
greatest  philanthropist. 

And  for  the  matter  of  that  he  regarded 
all  philanthropy  as  so  much  meddling 
with  the  affairs  of  others,  and  charity  as 
the  instigator  of  numerous  sins.  He  saw 
in  so-called  unselfishness  the  enforced 
necessity  most  men  feel  of  doing  the  least 
that  one  can  and  heralding  to  the  skies 
what  little  they  have  done,  as  if  it  were 
whole-souled  renunciation. 

^^Selfishness  is  not  living  as  one  wishes 
to  live ;  it  is  asking  others  to  let  one  live  as 
one  wishes  to  live.  And  unselfishness  is 
letting  other  people's  lives  alone,  not  inter- 
fering with  them."  Here  is  the  philo- 
sophy of  freedom  embodied.  He  believed 
that  all  lives  should  grow,  just  as  flowers 
grow,  and  that  each  life  should  take  on 
its  own  expression.  With  one  other  great 
soul  he  held,  ^'Hands  off;  if  you  can  help, 
well  and  good;  if  you  cannot  help,  be- 
ware of  interfering!''    That  was  the  sum 


48 


REVELATIOXS 


and  substance  of  the  selfishness  of  wliicli 
lie  lias  been  accused.  Why  should  one 
live  for  others?  Let  one  first  learn  how 
to  live  for  himself,  and  if  one  learns  how 
to  live  for  himself,  if  he  has  learned  how 
to  realize  his  own  ideals  and  to  stand 
firmly  on  the  individual  basis  of  thought 
and  experience — the  whole  environment 
in  which  he  moves  is  made  better,  thous- 
ands of  times  by  it. 

He  held  all  life  to  be  sacred.  He  re- 
garded it  with  the  veneration  one  ap- 
proaches a  great  and  solemn  sacrament. 
He  denied  that  life  could  be  placed  into 
the  narrow  enclosures  of  speculative 
•opinions  or  even  of  accepted  moral  stan- 
dards. He  realized,  as  do  all  philoso- 
phers, that  morality  is  a  shifting  quantity 
and  according  to  different  times  do  differ- 
ent standards  arise.  He  saw  that  the 
vices  of  the  few  are  the  price  society  pays 
for  the  virtues  of  the  many.  He  saw, 
also,  that  there  were  elements  in  human 

49 


REVELATIONS 


nature,  if  not  for  tlie  actual  admiration 
of  vice,  then  at  least  for  tlie  make-up  of 
that  great  body  of  experience  which  is 
the  history  of  human  society  as  personi- 
fied in  the  tragic  characters  of  the  opera 
and  the  drama.  In  other  words,  he  saw 
the  artistic,  and  the  human  and  historic 
realities  of  vice.  The  only  fault  that  the 
world  finds  with  its  own  badness  is,  after 
all,  not  the  badness  of  badness,  but  the 
weakness  of  badness,  for  vices  committed 
on  a  great  scale  are  approved  of  by  so- 
ciety. He  who  stains  his  hands  with  the 
blood  of  one  single  life  is  a  murderer ;  he 
who  slaughters  millions,  either  by  the 
sword,  or  by  the  more  foul  means  of 
financial  power,  is  the  hero. 

Oscar  Wilde  knew  that  the-  world  is 
bad,  very  bad  as  it  goes ;  so  he  tore  off  the 
mask  and,  admitting  that  there  were  bad 
elements  in  human  nature,  made  these 
very  things  the  corner-stone  of  a  higher 
order  of  life  and  a  still  greater  standard 


50 


REVELATIONS 


of  art  for  society  witli  its  future.  Re- 
ligion to  liim,  became  the  natural  living 
of  life ;  and  in  this  sense  he  went  even  so 
far  as  to  place  the  self-expression  of  the 
poet  Shelley  on  the  same  level  of  spiritu- 
ality as  he  spoke  of  Father  Damien,  who 
went  out  from  home  and  comfort  to  the 
abiding-place  of  the  leperous  outcasts. 
It  was  the  vulgarity  in  badness  that  Oscar 
Wilde  denounced;  and  of  vulgarity  and 
of  death  he  mentions  that  they  are  the 
only  inexplicable  facts. 

Gifted  with  that  insight  into  the  social 
structure,  he  mercilessly  assailed  every 
institution  and  every  personality  he 
found  on  the  side  of  that  ponderous  hy- 
pocrisy which  goes  by  the  name  of  social 
progress.  For  this  reason  he  made  ene- 
mies, many  enemies,  and  enemies  who 
hated  him  with  the  hatred  which  pursued 
Mm  until  the  end — the  hatred  that  put 
him  into  the  prison-house  and  hounded 
him  even  after  his  spirit  had  been  broken. 

51 


REVELATIONS 


The  world  lias  no  time  for  those  who 
upset  its  sense  of  hypocritical  righteous- 
ness and  complacent  ease.  It  hounds 
them  out  and  gives  them  no  peace. 

Oscar  Wilde  was  the  prophet  of  the 
World  of  Becoming;  and  one  never  knows 
with  regard  to  the  future  what  new  moods 

/  of  social  consciousness  and  conscience 
may  arise.  His  belief  was  that  life 
should  be  seen  as  the  stream  of  fluctuat- 
ing experience  and  that  no  portion  of  the 
stream  could  be  permanent  or  absolutely 
true,  that  does  not  flow  with  the  swift- 
ness of  the  current  towards  the  ocean  of 
future  progress.  No  form  of  culture  was 
true,  to  him,  except  in  so  far  as  it  bore 
the  stamp  of  the  constant  renewal  of  its 
possibilities.  To  him  life  was  long  and 
art  was  fleeting,  and  the  more  real  w^ 

I  could  make  our  visualization  of  the  ideals 
in  art,  and  the  more  concrete  we  could 
make  our  artistic  images  and  artistic  op- 
portunities, the  more  would  we  shorten 

52 


KEVELATIOXS 


the  monotony  of  life,  tlie  more  would  we 
rid  ourselves  of  the  mortality  of  life  and 
enter  the  ranks  and  the  files  of  the  Im- 
mortals. To  him  truth  was  never  sta- 
tionary. It  was  eternal,  and  it  was  true, 
because  it  constantly  assumes  newer  and 
more  revealing  relations.  Truth  is  made 
up  of  the  progress  of  luminous  ideas,  and 
the  more  luminous  the  ideas  become,  the 
more  luminous  do  the  personalities  be- 
come who  understand  them.  The  spir- 
itual outlook  he  possessed  was  the  facing 
of  reality,  the  tearing  off  of  all  masks,  of 
all  appearances  from  society  and  from 
thought  and  the  entering  into  the  domain 
of  real  things  even  at  the  cost  of  a  thor- 
'ough  self-confession,  on  the  part  of  so- 
ciety, of  its  own  weaknesses. 

The  clever  writer  was  the  deep  philoso- 
pher. The  brilliant  epigrammatist  had 
within  him  the  serious  philosopher,  the 
enlightened  sage.  And  the  conscious  man, 
Oscar  Wilde,  was  the  compounding,  into 

53 


REVELATIONS 


one  single  eloquent  utterance,  of  the  sub- 
conscious voices  of  numerous  personal- 
ities that  slept  in  the  depths  of  the  thought 
within  him.  He  was  not  only  the  exquisite 
moulder  of  exquisite  sentences,  but  the 
observer  of  all  other  observers.  He  was 
the  philosopher-poet,  the  poet-philoso- 
pher. He  was  the  destroyer  of  those 
beautiful  illusions  society  entertains, 
which  makes  virtues  of  its  vices  and 
truths  of  the  most  glaring  falsenesses. 
He  showed  the  hollowness  of  the  appar- 
ently sound  basis  of  the  culture  of  our 
times.  He  turned  over  the  conventional 
notion  of  what  is  ethical  and  of  what  is 
proper ;  and  he  was  the  ^'Arbiter  Eleganti- 
arum"  in  the  domain  of  modern  sociology 
and  of  the  culture  that  is-to-be. 

The  shams  of  religion,  the  shams  of 
politics,  the  shams  of  society  and  the 
shams  of  morality, — all  these  Oscar  Wilde 
laid  bare.  He  made  a  confession  to  so- 
ciety of  its  own  faults,  and  he  laughed 

54 


REVELATIONS 


at  all  its  sins.  He  excused  them  as  a  god 
might  excuse  them  and  he  endeavoured  to 
show  the  ways  of  repentance  in  the  fol- 
lowing of  a  newer,  more  enlightened,  more 
truly  human  outlook  where  the  vision  is 
fixed  upon  the  realities  in  the  World  of 
Constant  Becoming. 

But  the  sinner  is  wary  of  the  confes- 
sional ;  and  for  this  reason  did  the  world 
have  little  use  for  its  father-confessor  in 
Oscar  .Wilde. 


55 


Mtmtiom 


IXTEXTIONS 

If  one  makes  a  tlioroiigli  study  of  tlie 
life  of  Oscar  .Wilde,  lie  is  inevitably 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  realistic 
features  of  the  whole  life  of  the  man. 
He  is  brought  face  to  face  with  the  in- 
tentions of  Oscar  Wilde.  Whatever  may 
have  been  the  final  outcome  of  the  career 
of  Oscar  Wilde  in  so  far  as  externals  go 
and  in  so  far  as  the  world  approved  or 
disapproved,  there  is  no  doubt  that  within 
the  sphere  of  his  own  personal  under- 
standing  of  the  values  of  life,  his  inten- 
tions were  real.  That  is,  he  was  sincere. 
Earlv  in  life  he  had  come  across  the 
knowledge  of  the  message  that  lies  behind 
all  art ;  early  in  life  he  had  come  to  realize 
the  urgent  spirit  of  progress  as  the  back- 
ground of  the  expression  any  age  gives 
of  itself  in  art.  Therefore,  from  the  ear- 
liest beginning  of  his  literary  life  he  set 

59 


INTENTIONS 


himself  to  that  task  of  becoming  aware 
of  the  essential  elements  of  art, — which, 
after  all,  are  of  the  realities  of  life  itself. 
So  when  he  speaks  of  himself  as  render- 
ing the  terms  and  the  consciousness  of 
philosophy  into  the  domain  of  art,  one 
jSinds  that  he  is  not  splendidly  insincere, 
not  anxious  to  be  known  as  the  clever  and 
unreal  paradoxist,  but  eager  to  make  art 
the  medium  for  the  experience  of  life,  to 
make  art  the  expression  of  life.  Through 
this  form  he  succeeded,  where  most  others 
have  failed,  in  putting  realism  into  art, 
of  heightening  the  realities  of  art,  of  mak- 
ing art  more  human,  more  real,  more  of 
a  messenger  of  the  concrete,  more  of  a 
power  in  interpreting  life  as  it  is. 

This  was  fundamentally  the  intention  of 
Oscar  Wilde — to  take  art  from  its  rather 
metaphysical  ground  into  the  sound- 
er realities,  where  its  foundation  w^ould 
be  life.  Imagination  w^as  to  be  subordi- 
nated   to    the    marvelous    realism    that 

60 


INTENTIONS 


already  exists.  For  these  reasons  his  very- 
life  was  a  revelation  in  art;  it  was  the 
expression  of  a  free-living,  free-thinking 
soul  whose  personality  was  the  outcome 
of  a  rich  soul,  even  as  the  glorious  rose- 
blosson  is  of  the  great  richness  of  the  soil. 
He  saw  dreams  not  outside,  but  within 
life.  He  saw  the  ideal  with  the  real.  Be- 
fore him  the  real  and  ideal  were  separate ; 
in  the  contents  of  his  literary  message 
they  were  revealed  as  one.  Life  itself  is 
the  standing-ground  of  the  real  and  the 
ideal.  Life  itself  is  the  treasure-house  of 
all  reality  and  of  all  beauty  and,  verily, 
even  of  all  divinity.  Scrutinizing  the 
pages  of  his  works  one  is  constantly  re- 
minded of  the  richness  and  glory  of  life. 
Even  religion,  for  him,  was  in  the  natural 
living  of  life,  in  the  spontaneity  of  soul  in 
its  response  to  the  stimulus  of  the  outside 
world.  The  visible  universe  was,  in  his 
mind,  a  temple,  and  each  soul  a  priest 
in    waiting    upon    the    Universal    Soul, 

61 


INTENTIONS 


the  One  Real.  Therefore,  art  must  not 
deny  life;  it  must  simply  reveal  it. 
And  in  the  revelation,  naturally,  there 
is  frequently  to  be  found  a  setting-at- 
nought  of  our  easy,  time-made  and  small- 
opinioned  standards  of  ethics  and  seem- 
ing propriety.  Civilization  is,  in  itself, 
a  movement  from  simplicity  to  com- 
plexity, or,  in  other  words  a  speeding 
of  the  human  soul  from  virtue  to  vice. 
A  moment  arrives  in  the  ensemble  of  the 
ideals  of  culture  when  the  climax  has  been 
reached.  And  then  the  nations  cry  out, 
"Alack  the  day!  Have  we  come  in  our 
search  for  truth,  in  our  far-striding  on 
the  paths  of  progress — to  THIS  I''  Such 
is  the  complaint  of  the  age !  And  that  is 
why  every  poet  is  a  messenger  of  the  Re- 
turn to  Simplicity,  which  is  the  Mother- 
hood of  Virtue.  That  is  w^hy  poets  are  the 
prophets  of  the  times,  and  why  their  mes- 
sage is  always  spiritual.  It  is  the  seeing 
of  the  ideal  in  the  real, — and  this  is,  or  it 

62 


IXTEXTIOXS 


should  be,  the  message  of  art,  the  function 
of  all  artistic  intention; — and  it  was 
this  that  fundamentally  underlayed  the 
purposes  of  the  life  of  Oscar  Wilde. 

Outside  the  ways  of  civilization  is  the 
frreat  freedom  of  life.  Civilization  is  a  / 
limitation  which  the  ignorance  of  society 
places  upon  the  naturalness  of  life.  Oscar 
Wilde  having  seen  deeply  into  the  appear- 
ance of  society,  saw  that  behind  the  dis- 
cipline-of-fear,  which  makes  society,  was  \ 
all  the  longing  of  the  spirit  of  man ;  and 
progress  is  the  bursting  of  limitations. 
And  ignorance  dislikes  moving — that  is  , 
why  progress  inevitably  brings  pain,  and 
why  the  luminous  personalities  who  in- 
augurate progress  are  always  sacrificed 
to  the  ignorance  of  man,  being  crucified 
as  was  Jesus  Christ  of  old.  Oscar  Wilde, 
after  having  read  the  meaning  of  the  dif- 
ferent historic  experiences,  felt  that  in 
the  society  of  the  Greeks,  in  the  height  of 
their  social  prosperity,  were  realized  the 

63 


INTENTIONS 


ideal  visions  of  life  that  was  there  lived 
to  its  fullest,  where  it  was  flexible  to  the 
stimulus  of  the  natural  desires  of  man ; 
and  the  desires  of  man,  when  natural, 
are  always  artistic.  He  sensed  the  spirit 
of  his  own  epoch  as  born  of  the  smallness 
of  men  who  barter;  he  saw  his  period  as 
that  of  trade  and  of  the  extension  of  em- 
pire,— not  through  the  romance  of  sacri- 
fice and  the  heightened  imagination  of 
nations,  but  through  the  pain  of  the  poor 
and  the  oppressed  and  the  merciless 
power  of  moneyed  associations,  when  it  is 
all  sordid  and  cruel  without  a  morsel  of 
romance.  The  life  of  Oscar  Wilde,  and 
his  art  as  well,  will  testify  to  the  romance 
of  things.  It  is  the  note  of  a  rich  sim- 
plicity, the  sound  of  an  old  ideal  world 
in  the  loud  noise  and  strife  of  the  present 
ao^e.  It  is  the  clarion-call  to  a  newer 
order  founded  upon  venerably-old  spir- 
itual ideals.  After  all,  life  is  an  experi- 
ment, as  said  in  a  previous  chapter,  and 

64 


IXTEXTIOXS 


every  soul  is  making  an  effort  at  the  in- 
terpretation which,  in  ratio  to  the  char- 
acter of  its  desires,  it  deems  the  highest. 
In  this  light,  even  mistakes  balance  to 
the  credit  side.  Even  mistakes  are  the 
landmarks  of  progressive  movement. 
Even  mistakes  are  the  signs  and  prophe- 
cies of  higher  things.  And  the  relation  of 
art  to  ethics  is  the  taking-into-one-beauti- 
ful-whole  of  the  mistakes  and  the  virtues. 
Vice  is  never  offensive  under  the  gold 
covering  of  art.  Theology,  not  art,  has 
made  vice.  Vice  dwells  in  vulgarity.  Vul- 
garity is  vice.  Apart  from  vulgarity,  all 
life  is  beautiful,  is  real,  is  good,  is  of  the 
soul.  This  was  the  message  of  Oscar 
Wilde,  and  of  this  was  the  character  of 
his  intention  as  wrought  into  his  message. 
When  Oscar  Wilde  speaks  of  art  it  is 
no  limited  sense.  It  is  an  all-embracive 
definition  that  he  gives.  Art  is  the  visual- 
ization of  the  perfect  things  in  life ;  it  re- 
veals the  perfection  of  life,  and  the  reve- 

65 


INTENTIONS 


lation  may  be  in  literature  or  in  pliiloso- 
pliy,  in  music  or  in  marble,  on  canvas  or 
in  stone.  Its  meaning  may  be  read  in  the 
architecture  of  a  cathedral  or  in  a  poem ; 
it  may  be  glimpsed  in  song  or  in  eloquence 
of  any  form.  In  this  inclusive  sense  art 
is  philosophy  or  the  concrete  reflection  of 
man  upon  life ;  it  is  the  vision  of  man  as 
to  the  glories  and  the  powers  of  life, 
whether  it  be  the  glories  and  the  powers 
of  pain  or  of  pleasure,  or  of  so-called  evil 
or  of  so-called  good.  Art  is  life ;  it  is  ever 
at  oneness  with  life.  It  is  the  perfect 
commingling  of  the  soul  of  man  with  the 
soul  of  nature.  And  the  poet  is  the  high- 
priest  of  art.  What  mighty  messages  are 
throbbing  in  his  heart!  What  messages 
and  what  revelatioirs !  In  him  nature  is 
struggling  for  the  incarnation  of  itself; 
in  him  nature  seeks  articulate  expression 
of  itself.  It  has  made  the  brain  of  the 
artist  for  the  purposes  of  revealing  glory 
even  as  it  has  created  the  oceans  and  the 

66 


IXTEXTIONS 


rock-ribbed  mountains.  The  artist  is  as 
mucli  a  part  of  nature  as  are  the  sky  and 
the  stars.  Oscar  Wilde  perceived  this  as 
one  perceives  any  physical  object  and, 
consequently,  he  made  this  perception  of 
the  early  years  of  manhood  the  conscious 
intention  of  all  his  work.  The  intentions 
of  every  poetic  soul  are  the  flashlights 
nature  throws  out  upon  its  own  forms  and 
realities.  Through  the  intentions  of  the 
poet  the  vision  of  the  world  grows  larger. 
This  is  the  spiritual  feature  of  the  lives 
and  of  the  intentions  of  the  poet-artists 
and  of  the  artist-poets.  Revelation! 
Revelation!  Revelation!  Indeed,  that  is 
the  burden  of  all  poets'  songs. 

The  drift  of  the  artistic  tendencies  has 
always  been  into  the  direction  of  physical 
idealism ;  and  it  will  be  seen  that  physical 
idealism  is  a  mode  of  spiritual  perception. 
Through  the  glories  of  form  the  soul  steps 
into  the  region  of  the  formlessness  of  its 
own  life,  where  the  substance  of  life  is 

67 


INTENTIONS 


seen  as  freedom,  and  the  form  of  life  an 
ideal  form  whose  substance  is  beanty. 
Behind  everything  Oscar  Wilde  intended 
to  see  the  soul.  He  insisted  that  behind 
all  expression  must  be  the  reality  of  the 
flood  of  feeling,  the  truth  of  the  soul,  the 
realization  of  the  power  of  the  soul.  For 
all  art  is  the  product  of  feeling;  some- 
times, indeed,  of  riotous,  violent  feeling; 
sometimes,  indeed,  of  the  culminating 
glory  of  feeling, — which  is  divinity.  Art 
is  the  complement  of  life ;  it  fulfills ;  it  is 
the  other  half;  without  it  life  would  be 
purely  physical.  With  it  life  is  divine; 
with  it  life  is  reality ;  with  it  one  has  the 
vision  of  the  soul  encased  in  the  beauty 
of  form.  The  artist  points  to  the  soul 
that  is  set  as  a  precious,  priceless  jewel 
within  the  setting  of  form.  The  soul,  the 
poet  sees,  in  the  subtle  reality,  forever 
escaping  definition,  forever  passing  the 
scrutiny  of  knowledge.  That  is  why  Oscar 
Wilde  repeatedly  stated  that  neither  life 

68 


INTENTIONS 


nor  art  can  be  set  down  by  hard  and  fast 
rules.  These  are  the  free  because  they 
are  of  the  soul.  And  the  soul  is  a  reality 
that  cannot  be  bound,  nor  encompassed, 
that  cannot  be  limited  nor  circumscribed 
in  any  way.  The  intentions  of  Oscar 
Wilde  were  of  the  soul  of  him ;  they  em- 
bodied the  determination  to  set  things 
aright  once  more  with  the  soul  which  per- 
ceives them ;  they  embodied  the  principles 
of  true  vision  that  are,  of  course,  dia- 
metrically opposed  to  life  as  he  found  it, 
and  as  all  artists  must  find  it.  For  life, 
as  it  is  lived  publicly,  is  in  cheap  ways 
and  in  sordid  intentions.  With  this  in 
mind  Oscar  Wilde,  announcing  a  social 
observation  said,  ^'There  is  this  to  be  said 
in  favour  of  the  despot,  that  he,  being  an 
individual,  may  have  culture,  while  the 
mob,  being  a  monster,  has  none.''  And 
the  mob  is  always  made  up  of  those  in 
position  and  in  power  who  are  the  owners 
of  barbaric  souls  and  to  whom  the  spirit 

69 


INTENTIONS 


of  ideals  is  a  foreign  goddess.  With  such 
as  these  the  materialism  of  the  age  is  a 
constant  companion ;  and  materialism  is 
always  the  death-blow  to  art.  All  artists 
are  the  apostles  of  the  soul ;  they  are  the 
preachers  of  the  spiritual  life,  for  they 
have  seen  within  the  encasements  of  flesh 
the  divine  light  that  shines  wherever  there 
is  beauty  or  glory,  or  majesty  or  power, 
wherever  there  is  truth  or  goodness,  or 
grandeur  or  greatness, — and  Oscar  Wilde, 
being  the  poet-artist  was,  verily,  such  a 
priest  and  preacher  and  apostle. 


70 


aspirations 


ASPIRATIONS 

Tlie  findings  of  the  poets  are  always 
spiritual  findings.  Their  vision  is  ex- 
tended, above  that  of  the  ordinary,  into 
the  perspective  of  nobler  realities.  Be- 
cause of  this  they  are  always  possessed 
of  glorious  aspirations.  Perhaps  some- 
times unconsciously;  but  it  is  always  so. 
The  medium  through  which  the  poet  ma- 
terializes his  aspiration  is  art.  In  this  he 
roams,  the  creature  of  the  free  impulse ; — 
and  the  free  impulse  is  always  the  im- 
pulse of  spirituality.  For  this  reason, 
unquestionably,  Oscar  Wilde  had  number- 
less aspirations,  whose  ideal  was  the  dis- 
covery of  the  real  and  the  true.  He  in- 
tended that  the  personal  vision  he  had  of 
the  true  and  the  real  should  be  applic- 
able to  the  society  in  which  he  found  him- 
self;  in  the  changes  of  society  he  saw  the 
spiritual  forecast  of  humanity   No  matter 

73 


ASPIRATIONS 


what  the  character  of  such  changes  might 
be,  they  were  changes,  and  for  this  reason, 
they  were  needful  and  good.  Monotony 
in  society  necessarily  implied  to  him,  that 
society  was  at  a  standstill  so  far  as  the 
opportunities  for  progress  were  con- 
cerned. He  believed  in  revolutions,  there- 
fore, and  also  in  rebellions.  He  was  the 
messenger  of  the  Rightful  Stirring  Up  so 
that  new  eras  be  born  out  of  the  chaos  of 
old  social  forms.  In  his  remorseless  crit- 
icism of  society  he  was  the  herald  of  an 
approaching  social  dawn,  when  better 
things  were  to  be,  and  a  more  real  and  na- 
tural order  of  living  was  to  transplant  the 
hypocrisies  of  the  day.  He  had  no  time  for 
the  mimicries  of  virtue  and  honour  that 
prevailed  everywhere ;  he  was  no  respect- 
er of  institutions  that  were  at  bottom 
corrupt.  And  he  was  the  champion  of  the 
depressed  and  of  the  downtrodden,  all  be- 
cause he  had  aspirations.  And  these  as- 
pirations had  nothing  whatsoever  to  do 

74 


ASPIRATIONS 


with  himself  as  a  personality;  they  had 
everything  to  do  with  the  society  in  which 
he  lived  and  in  which  he  believed, — how- 
ever cynical  it  might  seem  to  say  this.  He 
was  a  man  of  tempestuous  aspirations. 
In  him  one  found  the  prophecies  of  the 
future  fulfillment  of  society's  hopes.  He 
was  the  prophet  of  nobler  institutions  and 
of  an  epoch  of  heightened  sincerity.  He 
upheld,  fundamentally,  all  those  ingredi- 
ents of  culture,  however  the  world  might 
laugh  at  them,  which  embodied  the  pos- 
sibilities of  the  growing-forth  and  the 
becoming-big  of  the  spirit  of  romance. 
His  dramas  are  the  denunciation  of  so- 
ciety, at  first  glance ;  on  a  studious  survey 
of  their  real  characters  they  are  found, 
however,  to  be  the  hopes  for  a  better  or- 
der. Genius  and  not  birth  was  to  deter- 
mine aristocracy.  The  circle  that  was  the 
exclusive,  by  reason  of  its  very  inclusive- 
ness,  was  to  be  the  circle  of  the  intellect- 
ually and  intuitively  great.    The  burden 

75 


ASPIRATIONS 


of  his  message  was,  "Throw  off  all  ap- 
pearance! Let  us  stand  in  sincerity  of 
attitude  before  the  oncoming  of  the  future 
generations !" 

Oscar  Wilde's  aspirations  were  for  the 
poor.  How  his  heart  throbbed  for  the 
poor  of  all  ages !  The  heart-rending  fact, 
he  said,  of  the  French  revolution  was  not 
the  beheading  of  the  queen  of  France, 
but  the  voluntary  sacrifice  of  the  peas- 
ants of  the  Vendee  who,  though  starving, 
went  out  to  fight  for  the  hideous  cause  of 
feudalism.  On  all  occasions  his  heart 
suffered  and  struggled  for  the  depressed 
classes.  In  this  he  proved  himself  to  be 
capable  and  to  be  possessed  of  monu- 
mental sincerity.  He  showed  himself  the 
owner  of  multitudinous  aspirations,  and 
to  be  a  man  of  courage  and  a  man  of 
strength.  Coming  from  his  lips  one  hears 
that  strong  and  exquisite  saying  of  his, 
"Those  who  reject  the  battle  are  more 
deeply  wounded  than  they  who  take  part 

76 


ASPIRATIONS 


in  it."  And  therefore  he  threw  himself 
boldly  into  the  vortex  of  society;  and  he 
accused  and  he  accursed ;  and  he  took  the 
whips  of  criticism  and  lashed  heavily  all 
those  that  were  guilty  of  hypocrisy  and 
tyranny.  He  spared  none.  And  he  him- 
self was  not  spared.  For  he  stood  up  be- 
fore audiences  that  did  not  understand 
him;  and  he  was  mocked  and  persecuted 
for  his  vision.  And  still  the  welling-up 
of  his  aspiration  did  not  cease.  He  sang 
all  the  more  strongly.  And  he  sang  so 
loud  that  even  death  has  not  engulfed  his 
song;  but  then  he  had  said  of  all  song 
that  it  should  be  stronger  than  death. 

Here  and  there  one  senses  the  spirit- 
uality of  his  aspirations.  How  wonder- 
ful and  how  spiritual  is  that  remark  of 
his,  "Art  is  the  one  thing  death  cannot 
harm."  This  was  the  Faith  of  Oscar 
Wilde  that  only  that  was  real,  that  only 
that  was  spiritual  which  went  beyond  the 
conquests  of  death.     And  art  he  recog- 

77 


ASPIRATIONS 


nized  and  spoke  of  on  all  occasions  as  im- 
mortal. Because  art  is  an  inner,  spiritual 
existence ;  it  lias  nothing  wliatsoever  to  do 
with  the  concrete.  The  concrete  may  be 
its  medium,  but  never  its  own  subject. 
What  is  there  in  words  or  in  stones  save 
that  which  the  soul  reads  into  them? 
Oscar  Wilde,  together  with  all  other 
poets,  reached  beyond  the  borders  of 
purely  physical  things,  and  made  serious 
efiPort  to  perceive  art  in  its  own  sphere, — 
and  that  sphere  is  the  sphere  of  eternity 
and  immutability  where  nothing  perishes, 
and  where  every  single  image  is  perfect. 
The  aspirations  of  Oscar  Wilde  were  all- 
inclusive  of  the  modern  requirements. 
They  embraced  every  sphere  of  sociology 
and  socialism,  but  socialism  of  that  type 
which  meant  the  introduction  of  all  op- 
portunities for  artistic  expression.  In 
certain  portions  of  the  literature  of  Oscar 
Wilde  one  climbs  with  him  the  stairs  of 
gold  that  lead  above  the  marts  of  men  to 

78 


ASPIRATIONS 


God.  One  ascends  with  him  to  regions 
of  pure  feeling  where  the  soul  meets  with 
its  own  self  and  stands  on  the  border- 
lands of  infinite  things. 

Wherever  one  finds  Oscar  Wilde  it  is 
always  on  the  safe  side  of  progress.  His 
position  concerning  womanhood  bears 
this  out  in  strong  ways.  He  hoped  for  a 
brighter  future  for  womanhood,  when  it 
should  take  part  in  the  deliberations  of 
the  nations  and  should  take  its  seat  in  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  world.  His  aspiration 
included  for  womanhood  complete  eman- 
cipation in  all  forms.  He  was  never  mean. 
Whatever  he  saw  to  be  right,  he  an- 
nounced that.  He  could  not  be  insincere 
with  truth.  He  saw  that  conditions  of  so- 
ciety, particularly  in  the  realm  of  politics, 
tended  to  hamper  the  natural  and  per- 
sonal development  of  women;  and  that 
unless  they  asserted  themselves,  all  hope 
would  be  lost.  He  regarded  them  not  only 
as  women,  but  as  equals  and  counterparts 

79 


ASPIRATIONS 


of  men  in  the  effort  to  enunciate  the  hu- 
man realities.  In  fact,  in  the  very  highest 
sense,  he  was  the  pleader  of  no  law.  In 
that  he  was  a  spiritual  communist  and  so- 
cially an  anarchist.  He  saw  that  laws 
often  held  back  the  very  progress  they 
were  intended  to  accelerate ;  and  he  knew, 
also,  that  laws  were  as  capable  of  grow- 
ing infirm  and  old,  even  as  the  physical 
form.  Therefore  he  pleaded  for  no  law, 
except  that  of  Common  Consent  in  those 
matters  which  demanded  a  combination 
of  effort  for  the  revelation  of  higher 
things  and  nobler  ideals. 

Outside  the  mere  living  of  life  there  are 
glories  of  which  the  poet  alone  is  aware ; 
and  these  glories  are  resident  in  another 
and  more  luminous  sphere,  the  sphere  of 
ideals  in  themselves.  And  the  moment  of 
perception  is  as  well  the  moment  of 
ecstasy.  Thus  the  poet  is  the  saint.  He 
is  tlie  seer  of  things  as  they  are.  Closely 
does  he  touch  the  confines  of  ideal  things. 

80 


ASPIRATIONS 


He  almost  visualizes  tliem.  He  almost 
renders  them  concrete.  And  with  that 
splendid  eloquence  of  his,  Oscar  Wilde 
made  the  world  possessed  of  many  things 
of  which  heretofore  it  had  not  dreamed. 
Oscar  Wilde  dreamed,  and  the  world  is 
richer  for  his  dreaming.  In  that  delight- 
fully vsearching  manner  of  his  thought 
one  sees  how  he  was  naturally  the  mystic 
in  his  treatment  of  the  world  common- 
sense,  in  its  plea  for  sole  reality.  He 
looked  upon  the  world  of  commonsense  as 
the  world  of  tragedy  and  tears,  of  hollow 
mockery  and  terrible  laughter.  Only  in 
the  world  of  art  was  he  free;  only  there 
did  he  feel  himself  safe  from  the  reproach 
•of  them  that  dwell  in  small  ways  and 
whose  habitation  is  the  very  foulness  they 
condemn.  He  dwelt  there  where  truth  is 
peace  and  where  peace  is  illumination 
and  where  illumination  is  proximity  to 
God.  He  was  familiar  with  sights  and 
sounds  of  which  the  man  of  the  commoR- 

81 


ASPIRATIONS 


sense  world  has  neither  consciousness  nor 
capactity  of  faculty.  The  soul  of  Oscar 
Wilde  is  the  reality  of  him ;  and  all  other 
personal  elements  were  as  the  straws  that 
are  swept  before  the  wind.  For  it  is  the 
soul  in  every  man  that  is  reality ;  and  all 
other  and  personal  elements  are  verily  as 
straws  carried  on  before  the  wind.  And 
it  is  the  reality  in  a  man  which  is  desir- 
able to  see  and  observe.  It  is  the  aspira- 
tion towards  larger  spheres  of  reality 
Tvhich  is  worthy  of  witnessing.  And  this 
should  be  what  is  spoken  of  with  refer- 
ence to  every  man — that  wherein  his  soul 
is  large  and  divine,  be  it  in  the  arts  or  in 
the  sciences  or  in  religious  life.  The  re- 
ality in  man  is  free  from  all  personal 
dross;  it  is  the  shining  light  of  truth 
which  God  sees,  and  in  that  reality  God 
verily  makes  Himself  incarnate.  The  re- 
ality in  each  and  everyone  is  the  reality 
of  the  divine,  and  that  is  of  the  soul.  Thus 
it  is  the  soul  which  is;  thus  it  is  theisoul 

82 


ASPIRATIONS 


whicli  aspires.  It  was  the  soul  whicli  in 
Oscar  Wilde  took  on  the  championship  of 
truth  wherever  he  saw  truth  and  confined 
itself  to  no  bounds  except  the  bounds  of 
the  determination  to  see  God.  And  in 
this  respect  what  visions  were  his  as  the 
result  of  his  aspirations!  They  w^ere 
numerous  and  enormous. 

In  the  urgent  impulse  of  the  soul  at 
self-discovery  and  self-expression,  we  find 
the  facts  and  characters  of  aspiration.  In 
the  effort  of  the  personality  of  man  to  rise 
to  the  soul's  level, — in  that,  verily  is  as- 
piration. In  so  far  as  a  man  rises  above 
the  average  conceptions  of  his  day  and 
perceives  newer  ideas  and  newer  ideals, 
only  in  so  far  does  he  enter  the  >vorld  of 
aspiration.  Aspiration  was  as  the  central 
flame  in  the  whole  spiritual  make-up  of 
the  illumination  of  Oscar  Wilde.  He  pos- 
sessed, also,  the  innate  strength  without 
which  there  can  be  no  aspiration ;  that  is, 
subconsciously  he  was  aware  that  within 

83 


ASPIRATIONS 


himself  were  the  powers  and  potential- 
ities of  making  aspiration, — realization. 
And  the  result  of  aspiration,  again,  de- 
pend solely  on  the  power  of  the  aspirant 
to  touch  higher  zones  of  consciousness 
and  vision.  The  whole  body  of  the  liter- 
ature of  Oscar  Wilde  is  that  of  aspira- 
tion ; — and,  also,  of  inspiration  that  comes 
of  aspiration. 

And  the  aspiration  of  Oscar  Wilde  has 
become  realization  not  only  to  himself. 
It  bids  fair  to  become  realizations  unto 
millions.  For  now  is  the  world  wide 
awake  and  on  the  alert  for  the  revelation 
of  newer  ideals.  And  in  so  far  as  Oscar 
Wilde  was  the  messenger  of  new  things, 
in  so  far  has  he  achieved  immortality  in 
the  memory  of  men.  And  because  he  was 
the  revealer  of  greater  ideas  than  have 
been  with  the  w^orld  before,  verily  for  that 
reason  is  he  to  grow  higher  and  higher 
in  the  estimation  of  men  and  to  be  en- 
dowed with  the  powers  to  think  and  live 

84 


ASPIRATIONS 


in  the  hearts  and  thoughts  of  others  who 
come  to  understand  him,  and  in  this  he 
had  already  become  Immortal !  And  for 
this  he  lived ! 


85 


Eealijations 


REALIZATIOXS 

Undoubtedly  the  realizations  of  the 
soul  of  Oscar  Wilde  were  many  and 
varied.  He  carried  with  him,  as  his  con- 
stant companions,  those  finer  realities  in 
the  way  of  feeling  that  are  peculiarly 
characteristic  of  one  who  has  been  made 
aware  of  the  potentialities  of  the  spir- 
itual impulse.  He  was  gloriously  con- 
scious of  the  reality  of  the  soul  as  domi- 
nant in  every  form  of  experience.  The* 
one  thing  that  is,  was  to  his  mind,  the 
soul.  So  one  finds  him  preaching  the 
doctrines  of  the  most  ancient  of  the  spir- 
itual teachers,  "Man,  know  thyself  I"  In 
fact  he  says,  "The  realization  of  oneself 
is  the  prime  aim  of  life,  and  to  realize 
oneself  through  pleasure  is  finer  than  to 
do  so  through  paiu.'^  The  expression  of 
one's  nature,  the  moulding  into  experi- 
ence, of  the  potentialities  within,  the  ma- 

89 


rp:alizatioxs 


terialization  of  the  possibilities  for  per- 
fection into  self-conscious  reality, — these 
things  to  him  were  of  the  beginning  and 
the  fulfillment  of  life.  And  the  natural 
medium  for  expression,  he  imagined,  was 
through  pleasure;  and  it  is  not  wonder- 
ful that  he  imagined  thus.  For  he  had 
been  too  long  the  disciple  of  the  Prophet 
of  Pain  not  to  know  all  the  inner  work- 
ings of  the  elements  of  pain  in  the  devel- 
opments of  'one^s  nature.  So  he  turned 
to  pleasure  in  the  end;  not  to  riotous 
pleasure,  be  it  remembered,  but  to  artis- 
tic pleasure,  wherein  the  soul  basks  free 
of  the  stigma  of  "good"  or  "evil.''  Dwell- 
ing within  itself  is  the  Live  Fire  of  the 
soul  which  is  of  the  Flame  of  the  Most 
High.  Let  this  fire  burn  as  it  will.  In 
the  end  it  must  always  and  inevitably  re- 
move the  dross  from  the  gold  in  experi- 
ence. 

Oscar  Wilde's  personality  loved  to  bask 
ill  the  sunshine  and  in  the  play  of  life.  To 

SO 


KEALIZATIONS 


him  life  was  Greek.  It  was  buoyant ;  it 
was  full  of  divinity.  It  was  spiritual ;  it 
was  of  the  gods.  And  immortality  was 
in  art  I  Immortality  was  already,  even 
here  on  earth,  in  the  adequate  fulfillment 
of  the  potentialities  of  personality.  To 
live  was  to  rank  already  with  the  Im- 
mortals, to  be  recognized  as  of  the  Olym- 
pian Gods.  And  his  fine  saying  was, 
^Olost  people  exist,  that  is  all."  Inher- 
ently he  had  a  passion  for  life.  To  him 
it  was  spiritual;  to  him  it  was  replete 
with  spiritual  portents.  It  was  big  with 
spiritual  meaning.  It  was  possessed  of 
spiritual  powers.  And  the  creative 
faculty  of  the  soul  acting  in  response  to 
the  highest  stimulus  of  the  soul's  own 
powers  was  in  itself,  utmost  spiritual. 
"The  senses,  no  less  than  the  soul,  have 
their  spiritual  mysteries  to  reveal,"  he 
once  put  it  in  this  relation. 

The  body  was  of  the  soul.    It  was  the 
temple  and  the  mind  and  the  soul  were 

91 


REALIZATIONS 


Priest  and  High-Prieet  respectively.  To 
him  each  had  its  function  and  its  sphere 
of  expression.  To  him,  body,  mind,  soul 
were  the  spiritual  trinity  of  the  micro- 
cosmos;  and  Art  was  to  dominate  all. 
And  in  Art,  using  that  term  in  its  highest 
significance,  were  to  be  discovered  the  es- 
sentials for  the  making  of  immortality 
out  of  the  elements  of  mortal  life.  The 
god  was  the  man;  the  man  was  the  god 
in-the-making.  And  the  whole  character 
of  the  message  of  life  he  read,  as  written 
in  the  sum  and  substance  of  the  capaci- 
ties for  expression.  He  revered  all  things ; 
he  despised  no  single  messenger  in  the 
revelation  of  life.  But  all  artists  are  of 
this  temperament.  All  artists  have  that 
within  which  says,  "All  this,  even  all  this 
is  good,"  and  they  find  fault  with  no 
thing;  and  they  find  no  fault  with  their 
own  lives  and  they  hold  that  everyman 
must  live  his  own  life.  But  artists  and 
poets  are  in  the  minority.    But  great  are 

92 


REALIZATIONS 


their  ideas;  nor  is  the  sun  as  great  as 
they.  Higher  than  all  mortal  traffic  is 
the  perception  of  the  assemblage  of  ideas 
that  draw  out  the  Man  in  man.  In  this 
the  poet  is  the  seer  of  potentialities  and 
powers.  He  is  the  angel  whose  sight  has 
been  perfected.  He  is  the  man  who  has 
seen  Manhood  that  is  of  the  type  and 
character  of  the  Super-Man.  O  for  the 
revelation  of  the  soul  within  the  form !  O 
for  the  divinity  in  the  expression  of  the 
senses!  O  for  the  seeing  of  God  in  the 
beauty  of  form !  Need-  one  make  myster- 
ies of  theology,  when  life  itself  is  the 
Greatest  Mystery  I  This  is  the  version  of 
poetry  in  relation  to  life;  this  also,  the 
message  of  art  in  relation  to  life — In  Life 
Behold  Religion! 

Religion  is  in  the  culture  of  the  eye 
to  the  perception  of  spirituality  in  the 
domain  of  physical  form ;  it  is  the  training 
of  the  faculty' for  hearing  to  the  attuning 
of  spiritual  sound  or  silence,  as  the  case 

93 


REALIZATIONS 


may  be,  in  this  din  and  strife  of  life.  It 
is  the  education  of  the  powers  of  motion 
in  the  direction  of  freedom  of  personal 
bearing  and  in  freedom  of  thought.  Even 
so  is  it  the  education  of  the  whole  self 
into  the  direction  of  Art.  And  art  is 
religion;  and  religion  is  art.  And  sym- 
bolism consists  in  the  transfiguration  of 
ideas  into  concrete  realities  that  walk  and 
speak  and  live  and  act  with  the  senses. 
For  now  is  religion  perceived  as  being  of 
and  with  art.  And  art  is  the  messenger  of 
spiritual  facts  amid  their  physical  encase- 
ments !  Who  shall  deny  this !  And  herein 
is  religion  safe  and  secure  against  all  the 
pulverizing  of  science.  Here  is  religion 
inviolable,  for  herein  it  has  come  down 
from  the  heights  of  mystery,  where  it  is 
dull  and  undefined,  into  the  sunshine  of 
living  surroundings  where  it  speaks  unto 
all  men  the  same  concrete  message,  the 
same  tokens  of  reality,  ^^Man!  Behold 
all  the  possibilities  of  Self  within  the 

H 


REALIZATIONS 


powers  of  tlie  Self  at  Self-analysis  V  For 
what,  after  all,  is  art  but  tlie  self-revela- 
tion of  man  into  tlie  substances  and  ma- 
terials of  art?  Is  there  any  distinction, 
therefore,  between  art  and  philosophy; 
and  is  not  the  artist  the  philosopher  as 
well? 

How  wonderful  was  his  delicate  treat- 
ment of  the  religions  as  he  found  them! 
He  saw  in  them  great  artistic  opportuni- 
ties ;  and  even  in  their  superstitions  did  he 
observe  foreshadowings  in  the  way  of  ro- 
mance and  beauty.  They  were  "the  colour 
elements  of  thought  and  imagination." 
Religion  offered  all  the  necessary  condi- 
tions for  indefinite  spiritual  expansion, — 
even  unto  that,  where  a  man  might  em- 
brace and  become  larger,  even  than  the 
sun  and  the  moon,  and  all  the  hosts  of 
heaven.  And  for  these  reasons,  was  every 
religion,  to  him,  a  form  of  actual  redemp- 
tion. But  for  this  reason,  also  and  inevi- 
tably, was  the  founder  of  every  religion 

95 


REALIZATIONS 


crucified.  Religion  is  romance;  it  is  ro- 
mance between  tlie  soul  and  its  own  king- 
dom. It  is  tlie  self-discovery  of  the  soul ; 
it  is  tlie  self-witnessing  of  the  soul's  own 
greatness.  Because  of  this  is  '  religion 
comprehensive  in  the  great  treatment  of 
life  as  art.  There  is  no  end  to  opportun- 
ity in  the  spiritual  realization;  and  all 
forms  of  life,  all  modes  of  expression  and 
experience  were,  to  him  most  certainly, 
in  and  of  the  soul.'  The  degree  differs  in 
the  ratio  of  intensity,  but  it  is  all  of  that 
one  and  same  spiritual  longing.  It  is  all 
one  and  of  the  same  spiritual  impetus  and 
striving.  Conquest  of  all  obstacles  to  ex- 
pression was,  to  Oscar  Wilde,  the  tri- 
umphing of  soul.  The  unravelling  of  all 
mysteries,  so  that  the  soul  might  stand 
forth,  claiming  itself, — this  for  him  w^as 
elemental  in  the  conception  of  religion. 
He  knew,  and  was  glad  in  the  knowing, 
that  spirituality  is  not  "religiosity'^  but 
something  quite  separate  and  apart.     It 

96 


REALIZATIOXS 


was  super-provincial  and  all-inclusive.  It 
was  not  theologically  territorial.  It  was 
not  dogamatism,  as  religion  is.  And  spir- 
ituality to  him  meant  the  consciousness  of 
the  suppleness  of  life  to  all  touches  of 
pure  desire,  all  touches  of  natural  aspira- 
tion; and  in  this  all  distinction  between 
*^good'^  and  ^^bad"  were  lost.  Then,  too, 
it  necessitated  luminosity  on  all  forms  of 
understanding.  It  implied  readiness  and 
sprightliness  of  the  intuitive  perceptions. 
It  meant  the  singling-out  of  spiritual  ele- 
ments wherever  there  were  any  to  be  had. 
It  included  the  consciousness  of  divinity 
within  one's  own  nature ;  and  if  that  were 
blasphemy,  then  let  the  world  make  the 
most  of  it,  and  even  God,  if  He  is  that 
personal !  For  is  it  not  that  every  atom 
is  spiritual  'per  se;  and  is  it  not  that  the 
worm  is  the  God  in-the-becoming?  Who 
shall  set  the  confines  to  the  expanses  of 
the  divine  nature,  or  who  shall  demarcate 
that  which  is  divinity  and  that  which  is 

97 


REALIZATIONS 


not.    The  spirituality  of  Oscar  Wilde  was 
Pantheism,  plus  Super-Pantheism. 

To  be  one's  self  a  god;  to  walk  among 
the  common  environment  of  life  conscious 
(of  a  superiority  within;  to  take  size  and 
measure  of  one's  own  stature  and  be  con- 
scious of  it  as  being  both  larger  and  more 
spiritual  than  the  limitations  that  civili- 
zation has  set  upon  life, — this,  in  another 
form,  was  also  the  spirituality  of  Oscar 
Wilde.  Need  we  wonder,  then,  at  his  tem- 
pestuous efforts  at  self-expression !  Need 
w^e  wonder  at  the  revelations  he  gave  of 
himself !  His  spirituality  was  flower-like. 
It  loved  the  Son  of  God  and  understood 
Him  and  could  set  Him  amidst  the  jewels 
of  poetry  as  much  as  he  could  speak  of  a 
flaming  sunset  or  an  experience  of  the 
uttermost  in  feeling.  The  spiritual  im- 
ages of  Oscar  Wilde's  poetry  were  those 
that  constitute  the  proper  elements  of  the 
religious  consciousness  itself.  For  are 
not  the  rivers  and  the  flowers  and  the 

98 


REALIZATIONS 


mountains-  and  the  seas  parts   and  ele- 
ments of  the  Lord  God  Most  High  in  His 
Own  Nature?    At  least  to  the  poet  it  is 
so ;  and  it  was  so,  at  least,  to  Oscar  Wilde. 
He  found  immortality  and  God  in  Na- 
ture; he  found  Nature  in  and  as  God.    He 
saw  divinity  in  the  budding  of  the  rose 
and  divinity  in  the  setting  of  suns.     He 
vsaw  the  universe  as  created,  essentially,  in 
the  image  and  in  the  likeness  of  God ;  and 
as  to  God  himself,  he  found  God  dwelling 
within  the  Abyss  of  the  Soul.     Can  any- 
one read  his  poetic  stanzas  written   in 
Italy  and  bearing  upon  the  spiritual  real- 
ities of  Roman  Catholicism  without  feel- 
ing closer  to  Christ  as  a  Saviour  indeed, 
^because  Christ,  as  Oscar  Wilde  himself 
said,  was  undoubtedly  a  poet  among  poets, 
for  all  his  utterances  are  poetic   utter- 
ances ;  and  it  was  Oscar  Wilde  who  loved 
to  think  that,   indeed,   Christ  spoke   in 
Greek,  even  as  the  Gospels  were  written 
in  that  language.     And  languorous  fan- 

99 


KEALIZATIONS 


cies  float  upon  the  mind  in  tlie  dreaming 
of  tlie  poetic  dreams  of  Oscar  Wilde  of 
powers  and  potencies  tliat  he  was  made 
aware  of  in  the  frequent  and  marvellous 
unfoldings  that  were  his,  as  it  were,  in 
the  very  inner  vision  of  spiritual  worlds. 
And  his  poems  may  be  regarded,  here  and 
there,  as  prophecies  and  prayers,  and  he, 
himself,  verily  as  priest  and  prophet.  And 
throughout  one  catches  a  glimpse  of  the 
refinement  of  that  which  was  his  soul  and 
of  the  pain  it  knew,  and  of  the  longing  it 
knew,  as  well,  to  transcend  the  bonds  of 
physical  limitations  and  soar  aloft  into 
the  pure  empyrean  of  artistic  reality, — - 
and  to  him  artistic  and  spiritual  reality 
were  one.  They  were  not  one  or  two. 
They  were  aspects  of  the  Same;  and^that 
Same,— the  Soul  of  Man,— verily,  verily, 
his  own  Soul ! 


100 


ailummations 


ILLUMINATIONS 

Culminating  as  tlie  climaxes  in  his  lit- 
erature and  art  and  as  the  crown-piece  of 
the  jeweled  frame-work  of  his  life  were 
the  illuminations  of  Oscar  Wilde. 
Throughout  one  recognizes  in  him  the 
mind  with  insight.  His  art  and  his 
poetry  were  the  expression  of  his  in- 
sight, and  the  elements  through  which  it 
found  beautiful  form  in  the  expression 
were  numerous  and  consummate  illum- 
inations. These  pressing  hard  upon  the 
personal  consciousness  of  him  gave  utter- 
ance to  poetic  and  philosophic  song. 
Beauty  and  truth, — these  are  the  dual 
expression  of  that  inner  order  of  stimulus 
and  response  of  soul  whose  outcome  are 
illuminations.  The  soul  searching  with- 
in itself  for  reality  discovers  it,  spirit- 
ually, in  the  flow  of  concentration;  then 
follow,    in    the   train    of   concentration, 

103 


ILLUMINATIONS 


science  and  philosophy  and  art  and  new- 
modes  of  life  and  renewed  and  more  ex- 
alted states  of  consciousness.  This  is 
the  ecstasy  of  the  inner  life;  this  is  the 
w^orld  of  the  intuitive  self,  the  w^orld  of 
the  self  within,  greater  than  the  cosmos 
without.  And  in  the  grand  distinctions 
that  exist  betw^een  the  inner  world  of  one 
and  the  inner  w^orld  of  another  are  there 
the  distinctions,  likewise,  between  per- 
sons w^ho  are  ordinarily  human  and  per- 
sons W'ho  are  both  human  and  spiritual. 
The  incarnation  of  personality  becomes 
spiritual  in  the  transmutations  of  con- 
sciousness w^herein  the  latter  is  shifted 
from  normal  to  super-normal  relations 
and  w^herein  revelations  take  higher 
and  higher  flight  and  higher  and  more 
wondrous  form.  Within  the  depths  of 
personality  are  the  tides  of  divine  spir- 
ituality, but  the  ebb  and  the  flow^  of  them, 
so  far  as  time  and  illumination  are  con- 
cerned, depend  on  the  efforts  of  person- 

104 


ILLUMIXATIOXS 


ality  to  transcend  itself;  and  tliis  is4one 
in  the  seeking  by  the  soul  for  the  forms 
of  reality  and  of  beauty  and  of  truth. 
And  everyone,  according  to  his  own 
fashion,  approaches  divinity;  but  the 
method  of  the  poet  is  unique ;  and  the  il- 
luminations which  he  receives  are  more 
manifold  and  far  more  intense.  The 
whole  surge  of  life  is  divine,  but  the  poet 
meets  that  divine  reality  through  both 
forms  of  perception, — those  of  the  intel- 
lect and  of  the  heart.  The  search  of  the 
scientist  leads  him  along  the  arid  desert 
of  facts,  but  the  search  of  the  poet  is 
along  broad  rivers  of  spirituality  flanked 
with  wondrous  gardens  where  grow  the 
marvellous  and  beautiful  realities  of  soul 
in  the  gardens  of  love  and  life  and  where 
joy  reigns  and  where  the  perception  of 
truth  itself  is  joy. 

The  whole  imagination  of  Oscar  Wilde 
was  coloured  with  those  richer  elements 
of  life  which  are  immediate  to  the  treas- 

105 


ILLUMINATIONS 


iire-pJaces  of  reality  in  its  higher  sense. 
His  soaring  in  soul,  through  the  medium 
of  his  poetic  thought  and  fancy,  led  him 
from  out  the  tumult  of  life  into  the  si- 
lent retreats  where  the  soul  communes 
with  its  own  richness  and  its  own  ecstasy. 
To  the  poet  life  is  a  grand  spectacle  and 
he  is  the  privileged  witness ;  and  he  sings 
so  perfectly  because  he  is  not  of  it.  Or 
if  of  it  at  all,  then  he  sings  because  the 
panorama  of  life  is  beautiful  as  a  w^hole, 
both  in  its  sorrows  and  in  its  joys,  in  its 
mistakes  and  its  flaws,  as  well  as  in  its 
virtues  and  its  heroic  greatnesses.  The 
vision  of  the  elect  is  the  poetic  vision, 
and  all  saints  are  poets  and  all  saints  are 
prophets.  In  them  personality  is  dead 
and  the  heart-throbbing  of  a  world  is 
made  personal.  Their  personalities  have 
become  the  Individuality  of  the  race,  the 
sacred,  aspiring  Individuality  of  man  as 
Humanity.  Their  illuminations  horde" 
upon  every   definition  of  life.     That  is 

106 


ILLUMINATIONS 


why  one  finds  in  Oscar  Wilde  the  pro- 
phet of  the  redemption  of  society  as  well 
as  the  prophet  of  the  redemption  of  art. 
He  yearns  for  higher  ideals  in  education 
as  well  as  in  art.  One  hears  as  though 
it  were  but  yesterday  that  eloquent  and 
rich  saying  of  his  which  reads,  ''The  best 
way  to  make  people  good  is  to  make  them 
happy."  In  this  there  is  the  penetrating 
touch  to  all  educational  insight.  If  the 
purpose  of  education  be  the  training  of 
the  moral  faculties,  then,  indeed,  happi- 
ness, of  itself,  creates  the  conditions  for 
goodness.  And,  in  truth,  goodness  and 
blessedness  are  one. 

Indeed,  one  would  always  think  of 
classifying  the  moral  observations  of 
Oscar  Wilde  as  spiritual  illuminations, 
because  they  mark  him  out  to  have  been 
the  witness  of  the  wonderful  opportun- 
ities that  follow  in  the  wake  of  that  in- 
definably spiritual  morality,  dependent 
on  personal  insight,  which,  of  necessity, 

107 


ILLUMINATIONS 


insures  a  grand  futurity  in  all  personal 
and  spiritual  progress.  And  his  illum- 
inations in  this  sense  are  always  vibrant 
and  sonant  with  a  remarkable  under- 
standing of  the  relation  between  freedom 
and  ethics.  For  example  he  says,  "There 
are  moments  when  one  has  to  choose  be- 
tween living  one's  own  life,  fully,  en- 
tirely, completely — or  dragging  out  some 
false,  shallow,  degrading  existence  that 
the  world  in  its  hypocrisy  demands!'' 
Can  the  soul  speak  more  clearly  of  the 
demands  which  it  realizes  must  be  made 
of  ethics  in  the  way  of  spiritual  liberty. 
Hard  and  fast  rules  cannot  be  put  down 
for  that  expansion  of  thought  and  life 
which  is  the  growth  of  the  soul.  And, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  all  the  leaps  and 
bounds  that  have  been  made  at  any  time 
in  the  world's  history,  so  far  as  both 
morals  and  intelligence  are  regarded, 
have  always  been  the  sequence  of  the  vic- 
torious demand  made  by  the  soul  in  the 

108 


ILLUMIXATIOXS 


direction  of  living  its  own  life  and  of 
following  its  own  ideals.  Because  of  this 
insight  he  insisted  that  there  are  no  codes 
and  standards  for  the  artist.  Verilj  his 
own  temperament  is  the  standard  and 
test.  By  that  he  goes  forward;  by  that 
he  launches  forth  and  creates.  Had  the 
great  in  soul  who  have  made  the  world 
stopped  at  its  stupid  gaping  and,  in  fear, 
failed  to  proceed  onward  and  boldly  in 
the  paths  of  vision  and  insight,  to  what 
a  sad  pass  of  retrogression  and  benight- 
edness  should  society  have  come!  Cour- 
ageous as  lions  are  the  makers  of  the 
world  and  they  stalk  through  the  jungle 
of  confused  social  ideals  and  purposes 
with  that  manner — the  world  must  give 
way.  And  this  was  of  the  spiritual  il- 
luminations of  Oscar  Wilde  that  one  must 
proceed  boldly  and  valiantly,  not  heeding 
the  loud  noise  of  criticism  and  always 
mindful  of  the  vision  possessed. 

Take  him   from   his   environment,   or 
109 


ILLUMINATIONS 


rather  from  the  environment  of  his  age, 
allow  him  to  stand  in  the  pure  light  of 
the  flame  of  his  own  life  and  one  sees  in 
Oscar  Wilde  the  thoughts  and  the  ideals 
of  the  spiritual  genius.  He  believed  defi- 
nitely in  God  as  the  Highest  Good;  he 
certainly  believed  more  in  God  than  he 
did  in  man;  and  he  had  more  reason  to. 
But  then  he  also  believed  in  man,  but 
in  man  as  the  Super-Man  of  the  Future. 
He  believed  in  a  mankind  that  was  to  be 
whose  vision  should  never  be  blunted, 
which  should  be  able  to  see  truths  and 
ideals  through  the  largest  possible  human 
perspective.  Then  all  narrowness  will 
have  died  out,  all  limitations  that  now 
bind  society  will  have  been  broken.  Then 
all  superstitions  which  tend  towards  the 
destruction  of  romantic  culture  and  of 
the  romantic  spirit  shall  have  utterly 
perished,  and  mankind  stand  on  the  very 
pinnacle  of  consummate  intelligence  view- 
ing the  universe  through  the  benevolence 


110 


ILLUMINATIONS 


which  comes  of  deep  wisdom,  forgiving 
all  weakness  and  recognizing,  everywhere 
and  at  all  times,  the  potentialities  and  the 
goodness  of  man.  Then  should  the  vision 
be  concentrated  on  positive  realities ;  then 
should  the  vision  be  turned  from  the  ob- 
servation of  limitations  to  the  glorious 
consciousness  of  all  human  opportunities, 
even  though  the  marvellous  working-out 
of  these  opportunities  be  fraught  with 
fault  and  weakness.  O  for  the  vision  that 
sees  men  and  things  as  they  are,  in  the 
ideal!  O  for  the  vision  that  soars  be- 
yond the  deformities  of  physical  life,  that 
takes  in  a  larger  scope  of  the  ideal  world ! 
O  for  the  vision  that  sees  greatness  and 
forgives, — because  of  the  perception  of 
greatness!  Great  is  the  man  with  illumi- 
nations, and  few  indeed  are  those  who  are 
like  unto  him.  He  is  on  the  high-road  to 
the  realization  of  divine  things.  He  is  on 
the  approach  to  super-mundane  glories 
and  super-mundane  realities.    And  there 

111 


ILLUMINATIONS 


is  no  telling  when  or  how  he  will  think 
out  and  spread  the  message  of  the  re- 
deeming vision.  Oh !  the  poet  is  both  the 
priest  and  the  preacher  of  illuminations. 
And  illuminations  are  the  greatest  things 
in  this  world;  for  it  is  by  the  splendour 
and  by  the  light  of  illuminations  that  the 
w^orld  is  led  out  of  the  darkness  and  the 
confusion  of  its  relative  perceptions  into 
the  vision  of  nobler  and  more  inclusive 
realities.  Therefore  let  the  poet  be  un- 
derstood. It  is  not  necessary  that  he  be 
praised.  For  praise  is  often  given  be- 
cause those  who  praise  are  benighted  by 
external  show.  And  praise  is  cheap.  But 
rare,  above  all  things,  is  understanding; 
and  it  is  understanding  that  the  poet 
craves.  He  cares  not  for  sympathy,  ex- 
cept as  sympathy  is  the  Greek  thing, 
which  is  a  "feeling  with"  Sympathy, 
and  taken  in  that  definition  is,  indeed,  the 
highest  understanding.  Understanding  to 
the  poet!     But  for  understanding  there 

112 


ILLUMINATIONS 


is  required  a  passivity  to  the  message  of 
the  poet ;  there  is  needed  a  suppression  of 
the  egoistical  instinct.    One  must  live  in 
and  breathe  the  atmosphere  of  that  real- 
istic ideal  world  from  whence  the  poet 
breathes  his  aspiration.    One  must  have 
learned    to    ascend    through    the    com- 
monplaceness  of  life   to   the   great  and 
to  the  prodigious  realms  of  inspiration 
where  all  phenomena  are  appreciated  in 
the  highest  aesthetic  relations, — and  the 
highest  aesthetic  relations  are  of  divinity. 
The  poet  leads  those  to  whom  his  message 
reveals  itself  through  the  heaven-worlds 
of    beauty    to    the    radiant    and   higher 
spheres  of  divinity  where  the  soul  wit- 
nesses within  itself  the  ''Maker  of  Beau- 
ty" for  beauty  is  not  without,  but  within. 
And  the  more  one  penetrates  inward,  far, 
far  inward,  verily,  behind  the  net-work  of 
personality,  into  the  inmost  sanctuary  of 
the  soul,  the  more  does  he  become  aware 
of  the  source  of  the  aspiration  and  in- 

113 


ILLUMINATIONS 


spiratioii  of  poets.  The  more  does  he  en- 
ter with  the  poet  the  ecstatic  conscious- 
ness where  beauty  is  recognized  as  all- 
pervading  and  truth  as  embodied  in 
beauty.  The  strength  of  the  poet  is  in  the 
ratio  of  his  capacity  to  apprehend  illumi- 
nations and  to  impart  them,  as  well. 
Through  the  medium  of  language  the 
poet  steals  his  way  into  the  inner  pre- 
cincts of  the  divine  nature,  rendering  in- 
carnate in  the  graphic  beauty  of  poetry 
and  art  the  very  presence  of  ideal  things. 
The  world  of  illuminations  comes  closer, 
so  it  seems,  because  of  the  power  of  the 
poet-artist  to  render  vision  intense.  And 
Oscar  Wilde — of  him  it  may  be  truly  said 
that  he  put  the  illuminations  of  his  vision 
into  the  jewel-like  beauty  of  the  phrase- 
ology of  his  poetry  and  prose.  He  placed 
the  whole  setting  of  life  into  a  phrase, 
and  he  summed  up  the  whole  meaning  of 
life  into  a  song,  but  the  phrase  and  the 
song,  alike,  were  divine.     And  for  this 

114 


ILLUMIXATIOXS 


(should  lie  be  remembered  among  tlie  na- 
tions and  for  tliis  and  for  liis  illumina- 
tions sliould  lie  be  forgiven  any  faults 
that  lie  may  have  had  as  man ;  but,  other- 
wise and  apart,  should  the  world  seek 
jjardon  of  him  inasmuch  as  the  world  in 
its  smallness  in  assaulting  him  vehem- 
ently attacked  the  soul  of  which  he  was 
possessed.  And  it  not  only  decried  the 
man,  but  his  illuminations;  it  not  only 
took  dire  vengance  upon  him  for  his 
faults,  but  mercilessly  assailed  the  poet 
in  him.  But  he,  knowing  that  the  world 
is  by  its  nature  ligoted,  sought  peace 
with  God  in  his  retiring  days,  uncon- 
cerned as  to  the  happenings  of  the  world. 
A  grand  indifference  came  over  him ;  and 
he  became  concerned  only  with  the  under- 
standing of  his  own  soul;  and  he  sought 
communion,  likewise,  with  his  own  spirit 
as  the  great  are  wont  to  do.  And  it  was 
the  irony  of  fate,  proving  the  strangeness 
of  public  vision,  that  he  who  in  the  height 

115 


ILLUMINATIONS 


of  his  prosperity,  while  residing  in  Paris, 
should  have  been  appropriately  styled, 
*'The  King  of  Life,"  should  spend  his 
last  days  in  a  condition  bordering  nigh 
on  that  of  which  Christ  speaking  said, 
that  the  foxes  had  their  holes  and  the 
birds  their  nests,  but  the  Son  of  Man 
had  nowhere  to  lay  his  head.  And  it  was 
in  those  dark  hours  of  his  fortune  when, 
verily,  it  seemed  that  he  had  nowhere  to 
lay  his  head  and  no  place  in  which  to 
find  retirement  from  the  "terrible  laugh- 
ter" of  the  world  that  Oscar  Wilde  had 
those  illuminations  of  the  highest  spir- 
itual order  that  brought  him  close — very 
close  to  Grod,  freeing  him  eventually  from 
the  pain  of  the  body  and  the  contempt  of 
the  world  and  bringing  him  through  the 
valley  of  death  into  the  glorious  realm  of 
the  ideal  of  which  he,  as  the  poet,  in  his 
lifetime  had  such  radiant  visions  and  such 
resplendent  illuminations.  And  the  veils 
of  the  divine  peace  closed  from  his  view 

IIG 


ILLUMINATIONS 


all  tlie  miseries  and  all  the  selfishness 
and  all  the  woes  of  life,  taking  him  into 
its  own  ineffable  nature  where  he  became 
aware  of  it  and  its  blessedness.  For  the 
strength  and  the  effulgence  of  illumina- 
tion enter,  in  their  fullness  and  in  their 
fulfillment,  the  veiled  silence  and  the  in- 
communicable bliss  of  peace. 


117 


CancIu0ions 


CONCLUSIONS 

And  to  wliat  conclusions  shall  one 
eventually  come  when  the  book  of  the 
greatness  of  Oscar  \Yilde  has  been 
perused  to  the  closing  lines?  What  are 
the  final  realities?  What  are  the  last 
words  to  be  said  of  him?  That  he  was 
great ;  of  that  there  is  no  doubt.  Of  the 
fact  that  he  had  a  message  and  a  mission, 
there  is  no  doubt.  That  he  remodelled 
the  opinions  of  the  world  as  to  the  func- 
tions and  ideals  ot  art  is  true.  That  he 
gave  a  new  tone  to  social  aspirations, 
rendering  the  aspirations  of  the  multi- 
tudes into  spiritual  forms,  is  true.  More 
true,  however,  in  so  far  as  he  himself  is 
to  be  regarded,  was  the  magnitude  of  his 
personal  consciousness,  was  the  grandeur 
of  his  personal  insight,  was  the  soaring 
into  everlasting  realms  of  all  the  forms 
of  his  thought,  was  the  supreme  mood  of 

121 


CONCLUSIONS 


liis  perceptions  of  all  beauty  aud  of  all 
true  culture.  He  praised  the  worthiness 
even  of  things  which  seem  unworthy;  he 
saw  the  goodness  and  the  greatness  of 
that  which  the  commonplaceness  of  the 
world  stigmatizes  as  superstitious, — that 
is  the  developments  and  the  romance 
of  the  spiritual  consciousness.  And  in 
conclusions  it  must  also  be  said  that  he 
laboured  for  the  sake  of  labour,  that  he 
loved  beauty  for  its  own  sake  and  that  he 
was  busied  with  reality  because  reality  is 
divine.  At  one  time  he  remarked,  "To 
give  form  to  one's  dreams,  to  give  shape 
to  one's  fancy,  to  change  one's  ideas  into 
images,  to  express  one's  self  through  a 
material  that  one  makes  lovely  by  mere 
treatment,  to  realize  in  this  material  the 
immaterial  ideal  of  beauty — this  is  the 
pleasure  of  the  artist.  It  is  the  most 
sensuous  and  most  intellectual  pleasure 
in  the  whole  world,"  and,  indeed,  he  might 
have  added  that  it  was,  likewise,  the  most 

1  oo 


COXCLUSIONS 


spiritual  pleasure  iu  the  whole  world. 
For  the  expressiou  of  one's  self  through 
the  realization  of  the  immaterial  ideals 
of  beauty  in  material  form,  indeed,  that 
is  the  culminating  purpose  of  the  soul's 
existence.  The  soul's  own  vision  of  itself 
is  the  high  ideal  of  aspiration ;  aje,  there 
is  none  that  is  higher.  To  touch  deli- 
cately all  the  moods  of  life  and  express 
them  in  new  modes  and  to  finger  with 
divine  thoroughness  all  the  ideals  in  their 
true  nature,  verily,  this  is  the  task  and 
the  joy  of  the  rich  in  soul.  The  cardinal 
purposes  of  life  are  to  be  found  in  the 
soul's  expression  of  its  own  potential- 
ities ;  and  the  reading  of  every  single  life 
must  be  from  this  point  of  view.  Thus 
Oscar  Wilde  must  be  seen  in  the  relations 
that  were  true  of  him ;  that  is,  he  must  be 
recognized  as  one  who  determined  to  read 
the  meaning  of  life  in  the  writing  of  his 
own  soul  in  the  personal  experience.  For 
this  reeisou  he  could  see  neither  good  uor 

123 


CONCLUSIONS 


bad;  he  was  aware  only  of  tlie  forms  of 
expression  in  the  delicacy  or  the  vulgarity 
they  might  assume.  And  vulgarity  he 
thought  of  as  the  only  vice.  Everything 
was  to  be  forgiven  by  the  gods  save  vul- 
garity,— and  vulgarity,  he  triumphantly 
asserted,  was  the  conduct  of  others  in  the 
observation  of  the  sins  of  the  sinners. 
Badness  is  not  bad;  only  unsuccessful 
badness  is  bad.  Until  his  success  Gari- 
baldi was  a  brigand ;  until  its  success  the 
revelation  is  the  rebellion;  until  its  suc- 
cess it  is  treason.  And  so,  in  the  depart- 
ment of  ethics  and  aesthetics,  failure  in 
the  propaganda  of  a  new  ideal  inevitably 
means  that  the  preacher  is  denounced  and 
decried;  aye,  he  may  be  socially  ostra- 
cised, even  persecuted.  But  let  success 
crown  his  motives  and  he  is  praised  as 
the  deliverer  in  the  hours  of  darkness,  as 
the  redeemer  in  the  chaos  of  confused 
visions. 
Fast  is  the  time  approaching  when 
124 


CONCLUSIONS 


Oscar  Wilde  will  be  seen  in  Ms  true  liglit, 
and  when  the  world  will  draw  new  con- 
conclusions  from  the  phenomena  of  his 
literature  and  his  career.  Then  he  will 
be  seen  in  his  own  light  and  own  lumin- 
osity. Then  the  harping  critics,  who  love 
littleness  wherever  it  is  to  be  found  and 
are  blind  to  greatness  because  they  have 
not  the  faculty  of  perception,  will  no 
longer  be  heard,  and  he  whose  life  was 
one  long  sorrow,  one  uninterrupted  ac- 
quaintance with  pain,  and  the  ending  of 
whose  life  was  in  the  pangs  of  deepest 
pain  shall  be  divested  of  the  environment 
of  his  personal  sorrow  and  stand  revealed 
in  the  glory  of  his  vision  and  his  genius. 
He  will  be  seen  as  the  sociologist  among 
them,  as  the  artist  among  them,  as  the 
prophet  among  them  in  his  dramas,  as 
the  seer  amoug  them  in  his  poetic  songs. 
He  will  be  recognized  as  the  herald  of 
new  social  orders,  as  the  spokesman  of  a 
newer  and  far  more  inclusive  social  mes- 

125 


CONCLUSIONS 


sage.  He  will  be  regarded  as  all  artists 
and  poets  should  be  regarded, — from 
without  the  pale  of  ethics  and  within  the 
limitless  circumference  of  aesthetics 
which  becomes  incarnate  within  them. 
Then  will  he  be  seen  as  the  prophet  of  the 
greater  dawn  of  things  when  man  shall 
Avalk  upon  the  face  of  the  earth — a  crea- 
ture of  art  and  the  follower,  pure  and 
simple,  of  the  artistic  impulse  with  vision 
ever  fixed  upon  the  company  of  artistic 
ideals.  Personally  he  was  an  ^^Arbiter 
Elegantiarum"  in  the  social  fashions ;  not 
alone  that,  however.  He  was,  also  and 
especially,  the  "Arbiter  Elegantiarum'^ 
in  intellectual  and  artistic  fashions. 
Wherever  he  walked  in  the  greatness  of 
his  days  he  was  always  the  man  of  power 
in  the  insight  which  was  his,  the  man  of 
eloquence  in  the  expression  of  the  con- 
tents of  that  insight.  No  matter  when 
or  where  he  expressed  himself,  it  was  al- 
ways as  the  enthusiast  and  as  the  dreamer 

126 


COXCLUSIOXS 


of  dreams  that  are  real,  tlie  dreams  of  tlie 
ideals  that  are  to  be  true  in  the  more  glor- 
ious future  of  a  greater  to-morrow.  His 
motives  were  the  unconscious  aspirations 
of  multitudes;  and  since  his  day  it  has 
been  the  custom,  both  in  the  world  of  art 
and  that  of  drama,  to  speak  the  truth 
about  the  evils  of  the  day.  He  shifted 
drama  from  its  purely  historic  bearings 
into  the  light  of  the  present,  when  the 
drama  forthshadows  the  life  of  the  people 
as  it  is  lived  in  the  passing  of  the  days. 
It  was  his  initial  effort  that  made  the 
drama  the  moral  censor  of  society  and 
the  merciless  critic  of  the  smallnesses  of 
the  age. 

And  for  this  is  he  to  be  thanked ;  since 
his  time  the  whole  message  of  art  has  been 
thoroughly  renewed;  indeed,  it  appears 
to  have  entirely  reshaped  its  functions 
and  the  character  of  its  intentions.  It  is 
to  society  what  religion  and  the  church 
are  to  the  soul.    More  than  that  it  is  to 

127 


CONCLUSIONS 


society  as  the  sublime  dictator  of  true 
social  ideals.  The  commanding  element 
in  all  the  work  of  Oscar  Wilde,  however, 
and  which  made  his  dramas  so  character- 
istically and  intensely  real,  was  the  force 
of  his  personality.  Throughout  one  finds 
in  Oscar  Wilde  the  critic,  the  moralist, 
the  philosopher,  the  man  of  fashion  and 
the  man  of  the  w^orld.  One  finds  in  Oscar 
Wilde,  also,  the  man  of  spiritual  longing 
and  intellectual  sincerity — a  rare  combi- 
nation. It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  he 
did  not  have  the  full  scope  of  opportunity. 
For  had  not  misfortune  overtaken  him 
and  robbed  him  of  his  powers  of  joy  and 
sympathy  with  life  it  is  certain  that  he 
would  have  given  utterance  to  worlds  of 
farther  understanding  in  the  lines  of  the 
poetry  and  in  the  framework  of  the 
dramas  he  would  have  composed.  As  it 
is,  his  dramas  bear  out  the  demand 
that  he  forced  upon  society  of  changing 
its  standards  of  social  opinion.    Aristo- 

128 


CONCLUSIONS 


cratic  himself,  he  nevertheless  assaulted 
that  assembly  of  so-called  aristocrats  who 
live  physically  in  sumptuousness,  but  | 
who  are  devoid,  utterly,  of  any  intellec-  ^^ 
tual  or  artistic  outlook.  He  believed  in 
the  aristocracy  of  artists  and  poets  and 
world-seers.  He  laboured  for  that  end 
whereby  should  be  combined  the  great 
forces  of  society  and  the  greater  forces  of 
art.  Now  society  rules,  and  uninstructed 
society,  but  when  art  is  allowed  to  domi- 
nate, then  society  will  be  perfect  and 
beautiful  and  all  its  faults  shall  have  been 
made  virtues  in  the  transition,  and  all  its 
limitations  metamorphosed  into  splendid 
advantages  and  its  narrow  preoccupa- 
tions altered  into  gloriously  large  deal- 
ings with  the  future.  And  visions  of  the 
renewal  instead  of  the  ignorant  preser- 
vation of  culture  shall  dawn  upon  the  so- 
cial sight. 

The  intentions  of  Oscar  Wilde  were  al- 
ways with  the  future;  the  same  is  to  be 

129 


CONCLUSIONS 


said  of  his  aspirations  for  society,  and  in 
one  instance  lie  remarks,  ^'The  past  is  of 
no  importance.  The  present  is  of  no  im- 
portance. It  is  with  the  future  that  we 
have  to  deal.  For  the  past  is  what  man 
should  not  have  been.  The  present  is 
what  man  ought  not  to  be.  The  future  is 
what  artists  are.''  Already  and  in  our 
very  midst  is  the  world  of  the  future, 
prophesied  of  by  the  careers  and  the  be- 
quests of  the  poets  and  the  artists.  And 
Oscar  Wilde  was  an  inhabitant  of  that 
future  world.  That  is  why  the  present 
world  laid  violent  hands  upon  him,  for 
it  could  not  understand  him,  and  the 
world  always  deals  hard  with  that  which 
it  fails  to  understand.  How  far  his  vision 
extended  into  the  future  order  of  society ! 
He  anticipated  in  his  ideas  the  very  aims 
of  socialism,  purified  from  politics  and 
standing  in  the  light  of  spirituality.  He 
says,  "When  private  property  is  abolished 
there  will  be  no  necessity  for  crime,  no 

130 


CONCLUSIONS 


demand  for  it;  it  will  cease  to  exist." 
And  again,  '^Starvation,  and  not  sin,  is 
the  parent  of  modern  crime."     And  an- 
other saying  of  his  might  be  -added,  be- 
cause of  the  light  it  throws  in  this  re- 
lation, ^'So  completely  has  man's  person- 
ality  been   absorbed  by   his   possessions 
that  the  English  law  has  always  treated 
offences  against  a  man's  property  with  far 
more  severity  than  offences  against  his 
person,  and  property  is  still  the  test  of 
complete  citizenship."     What   a  careful 
summing-up  of  the  status  of  the  industrial 
age!     What   eloquent   foretelling,   as   it 
were,  is  it  also  of  what  is  to  come,  for 
socialism  is  the  social  condition  for  the 
future,  a  spiritual  socialism  wherein  shall 
shine,  as  great  human  beaconlights,  the 
virtues  of  sacrifice  and  selfishness  and  all 
the  virtues  and  advantages  of  the  great 
human  communal  consciousness.    Yes,  it 
was  in  the  future  that  Oscar  Wilde  lived ; 
and   were  it  possible  for  him  to  be  re- 

131 


CONCLUSIONS 


born  and  to  re-live  certainly,  whenever 
tlie  time  of  his  birth  and  life,  his  message 
would  deal  with  the  future,  because  the 
vision  of  the  future  is  always  purer  and 
more  refined,  as  compared  with  the  sordid 
realities  with  which  the  present  is  ever 
filled.  Oscar  Wilde  always  lived  beyond 
the  opinions  and  beyond  the  contents  of 
the  world  as  he  saw  it.  He  had  become 
the  avowed  lover  of  a  reality  more  spir- 
itual than  the  reality  with  which  life  is 
bound  up  in  hopeless  paradoxes  and  con- 
tradictions. It  seems  as  if  he  were  speak- 
ing much  of  himself,  though  perhaps  un- 
consciously so,  when  he  said,  ^'There  are 
two  worlds.  The  one  exists  and  is  never 
talked  about;  it  is  called  the  real  world 
because  there  is  no  neecj  to  talk  about  it 
in  order  to  see  it.  The  other  is  the  world 
of  art ;  one  must  talk  about  that,  because 
otherwise  it  would  not  exist.'' 

Ah!     Indeed!     Because  he  was  an  in- 
habitant of  that  world  which  is  not  talked 

132 


COXCLUSIOXS 


about  and  wliicli  is  difficult  to  see  was 
Oscar  Wilde  so  much  misunderstood.  But 
the  great  are  tlie  residents  of  that  world 
and,  'To  be  great  is  to  be  misunderstood." 
But  we  seem  to  see  the  soul  of  Oscar 
Wilde  as  caught  up  now  into  that  world, 
living  altogether  there,  freed  from  all 
the  many  bondages  of  this  small  world. 
And  when  the  anguish  of  pain  became 
most  intense,  death  came  to  him,  as  it 
were,  like  the  fiery  chariot  came  unto 
the  Prophet  of  old  and  he  was  carried 
up  by  the  pure  flame  of  his  own  soul  into 
the  region  where  immortality  lives,  be- 
cause there  is  the  world  of  art,  the  region 
where  joy  reigns  pure  and  boundless  and 
where  the  vision  of  beauty  is  unending 
and  ever  intense,  and  ever — ever — and 
forever  divine — for  there  is  God! 


133 


3ftertoorD 


AFTERWORD 

In  the  instance  of  the  poetic  tempera- 
ment, greater  than  the  personality  of  the 
man  is  the  larger  personality  of  the  poet ; 
but,  in  the  deepest  sense,  the  man  is  the 
poet;  at  least  this  was  true  in  the  case 
of  Oscar  Wilde.  To  him  the  man  and  the 
poet  blended  indistinguishably;  and  the 
beauty  of  the  poet  was  that  of  the  man, 
and  vice  versa.  It  is  in  this  light  that 
lone  sees  him ;  and  this  is  the  true  light  in 
which  he  is  properly  and  genuinely  re- 
flected and  in  which  his  genius  shines 
forth  in  its  fullness. 

The  room  still  stands  in  which  he 
passed  away;  it  is  but  a  stone's  throw 
from  the  Academie  cles  Beaux  Arts,  but 
he  is  no  longer  within  the  mournfulness 
of  that  time  when  he  dwelt  in  that  room 
with  his  dying  days.  He  has  gone  to  the 
great  Academie  des  Beaux  Arts  in  the 

137 


AFTERWORD 


real  realm  of  art  where  death  and  ugli- 
ness cannot  go,  where  all  is  beauty  and 
truth  and  beautiful  reality  and  where  the 
great  gods  walk  and  speak  with  those 
who  go  to  such  Olympian  heights.  He  is 
beyond  all  pain,  resting  within  the 
shadow  and  the  grandeur  of  his  own 
manifested  genius;  and  there  no  harsh- 
ness, and  nothing  unseemly,  can  touch 
him.  There  he  stands  apart  in  his  own 
light  above  the  censure  and  the  blame  of 
this  small  world.  He  has  been  caught  up 
into  the  radiant  world  of  art. 

Now  a  monument  is  to  be  erected  to 
his  name;  but  all  these  long  days  since 
his  passing  away  has  he  had  a  monument 
which  w^as  and  is  the  appreciation  of 
those  who  know  and  love  and  understand 
him.  And  this  is  a  mounment  which  time 
cannot'  cause  to  decay;  it  is  an  imperish- 
able monument.  And  he  dwells  also  in 
the  immortality  of  his  personal  illumina- 
tion, for  it  was  personal  illumination  and 

138 


AFTERWORD 


not  public  applause  that  lie  sought.  His 
was  an  illuminated  intellect  and  his  was 
a  soul  delicate  in  its  sensitive  response 
to  the  stimulus  of  rich  ideals. 

And  now  he  lives  in  the  company  of 
those  rich  ideals.  And  he  is  now  at 
peace, — joyous,  luminous,  silent  peace. 


FINIS 


139 


PSYCHIC  CONTROL 

"A  book  of  three  hundred  and  forty  pages  of 
living  truths." — Universal  Republic. 

"A  book  that  should  interest  a  large  class  of 
readers  who  like  research  into  the  subtler  forces 
of  nature  and  the  abtruse  working  mind  and 
spirit." — Banner,  Nashville,  Tenn. 

''The  author  emphasises  the  need  of  a  practical 
creed  that  shall  m.ake  the  soul  conscious  of  real- 
ities which  have  heretofore  been  believed." — The 
Bookman. 

'The  depths  of  the  soul  are  touched  by  the 
apostleship  of  a  newer  philosophy." — The  Times, 
Louisville,  Ky. 

*The  knowledge  of  v»-hat  constitutes  the  im- 
mortal self  of  each  animate  and  inanimate  being 
is  set  forth." —  Press,  Pittsburgh,  Pa. 

"Here  we  have  a  thoughtful  elaboration  of  the 
principles  generally  taught  in  what  we  recognize 
as  the  new  school  of  Philosophy." — The  Public. 

\  **In  his  descriptive  writings  the  author  has 
struck  the  spiritual  chord  of  the  world's  deepest 
philosophies" — Richard  G.  Badger,  Esq.,  In  Poet 
Lore. 

"As  water  purifies  the  physical  instrument  of 
the  soul,  so  the  mind  is  purified  by  adherence  to 
the  tenets  of  the  individual  conscience."  —  The 
Club  Fellozv. 

"This  is  a  study  of  the  mental  and  spiritual 
control  through  self-knowledge,  and  as  such  a  con- 
tribution to  the  literature  of  New  Thought." 
Democrat,  Little  Rock,  Ark. 

"The  knowledge  of  what  constitutes  the  im- 
mortal soul  of  each  animate  and  inanimiate  being 
is  set  forth  in  a  v;ay  that  leaves  an  indelible  im> 
pression  upon  the  mind.' — The  Despatch,  Phila- 
delphia, Pa. 

"Those  who  have  a  fancy  for  the  occult  will 
be  interested  in  'Psychic  Control  Through  Self 
KiiowlQdgQ.'J^Siinday  States,  New^Orleans,  La. 


PSYCHIC CONTROL 

"An  earnest  attempt  to  prcr^ent  a  system  of 
thought  and  a  method  for  the  development  of  the 
spiritual  faculties." — Inter-Occon,  Chicago,  111. 

"Mr.  Kenilworth's  work  is  fertile  in  thought- 
fulness  of  the  subjects  treated,  and  cannot  fail 
of  being  highly  commended  by  the  constantly- 
increasing  investigators  of  the  psychic  philosophy." 
Courier,  Boston,  Mass. 

"Walter  Winston  Kenilworth  emphasises  the 
need  of  a  practical  creed  and  system  of  self- 
knowledgQ." Plain-Dealer,  Cleveland  O. 

One  of  the  most  important  of  recent  contri- 
butions to  the  metaphysical  literature  of  the  New- 
Thought,  and  emphasizes  the  need  of  a  practical 
creed  founded  on  a  better  understanding  of  the 
spiritual  self." — Press,  Philadelphia,  Pa. 

*Tt  is  doubtless  a  very  fine  thing;  like  a  star, 
the  light  of  which  has  not  j^et  reached  the  earth, 
the  multitude  cannot  appreciate  it." — News  and 
Courier,  Charleston,  S.  C. 

"This  book  is  a  tribute  to  the  spirit  of  the 
age,  a  spirit  of  better  values,  higher  sympathies, 
a  deeper  recognition  of  death  and  a  more  ex- 
tensive spiritual  perspective." — American,  Balti- 
more. 

"The  great  principal  which  has  been  emphasized 
is  that  morality  is  the  medium  through  which  the 
deepest  psychic  and  spiritual  consciousness  is 
obtained." — Age-Herald,  Birmingham,  Ala. 

"The  spiritual  consciousness  which  corresponds 
with  spiritual  knowledge  is  shown  to  be  intimately 
identified  with  a  moral  consciousness." — Tribune, 
Minneapolis,  Minn. 

"Psychic  Control  Through  Self-Knowledge, 
emphasizes  the  need  of  a  practical  creed  and 
system  of  self-knowledge." — Plain-Dealer,  Cleve- 
land, Ohio. 

"New  religions,  new  systems  of  thought,  new 
systems  of  philosophy  are  turning  the  tide  of 
spiritual  unrest  from  the  orthordoxy  of  past 
ages.  The  profound  discoveries  of  modern  sci- 
ence are  forming  into  a  new  basis.     Then  he 


PSYCHIC  CONTROI4 

strikes  the  keynote  of  his  work — Faith  is  giving 
way  to  knowledge." — The  Herald,  New  York. 

"The  author  of  this  book  writes  the  lines  of 
what  is  called  'new  philosophy.'  He  takes  a  broad 
view  of  the  problems  of  life  and  shows  the  in- 
timate connection  between  the  spiritual  connection 
which  corresponds  with  spiritual  knowledge  and 
a  moral  consciousness.  The  book  is  interesting 
and  instructive." — Metaphysical  Magazine. 

"The  object  is  to  show  that  realization  of  the 
spirit  within  is  the  goal  of  spiritual  effort,  psychic 
control  is  the  direct  method  of  approach  and  mor- 
ality is  the  medium  through  which  the  deepest 
psychic  and  a  spiritual  consciousness  is  evolved." 
Chronicle,  San  Francisco. 

"How  we  can  gain  psychic  control  through  self- 
knowledge  is  the  theme  here  exploited.  Mr.  Ken- 
ilworth  argues  that  self-knowledge  must  be  estab- 
lished in  consciousness.  Man  has  in  himself  a 
reservoir  of  latent  energy  upon  which  he  is  at 
liberty  to  draw,  but  which  he  puts  to  slight  ac- 
count. ^  Mr.  Kenilworth  would  help  man  to  it's 
use." — Detroit  Free  Press. 

"This  is  a  psychological  and  philosophical  study. 
The  author  departs  from  the  orthodox  conceptions 
of  religion  and  the  soul's  relation  to  God.  H 
you  are  orthodox  and  wish  so  to  remain,  let  the 
volume  alone.  If  you  believe  faith  is  giving  away 
to  knowledge,  here's  a  book  you  want." — News, 
Galveston,  Texas. 

"The  author  has  taken  Solons  dictum  'Know 
Thyself,  as  his  theme,  but  has  handled  it  in  a 
manner  which  would  have  been  impossible  in  the 
days  of  the  Greek  philosophers. — It  is  a  call  to  in- 
dividualism as  against  the  modern  socialistic 
spirit." — Book  News  Monthly. 

"The  book  is  one  of  an  increasing  number  of 
works  showing  the  tendency  to  break  away  from 
the  old  established  forms  of  theology,  to  teach 
mankind  to  become  conscious  of  his  soul  and  to 
take  issue  with  the  old  orthodox  assertion  'be- 
lieve and  ye  shall  be  SdiYQd."— American,  New 
lYork,        > 


PSYCHIC  CONTROL 

"The  purpose  of  this  excellent  book  is  not  to 
teach  control  of  others,  but  control  of  self;  and 
it  deals  with  principles  rather  than  methods.  The 
value  of  this  book  is  far  beyond  that  of  mere  'psy- 
chic' uses  of  the  mind.  'The  Birthright  of  the 
Soul'  is  a  chapter  that  well  represents  the  refresh- 
ing energy  of  thought  which  constitutes  the  help- 
ful philosophy  of  this  book." — Bible  Rcznczv. 

"There  is  so  much  fakery  and  quackery  being 
laid  before  ignorant  and  unsuspecting  readers 
these  days  imder  the  titles  of  'psychic'  this  and 
*psychic*  that,  that  the  very  name  of  this  book 
gives  rise  to  dark  suspicions  in  the  mind  of  the 
reader.  And  yet  there  is  no  quackery  evident  in 
this  volume.  It  is  apparently  the  work  of  an 
earnest  and  sincere  man." — Telegraph,  Phila- 
delphia, Pa. 

"He  has  made  an  extremely  readable  book,  in 
which  the  influence  both  of  theosophy  and  of 
new  thought  is  visible." — Globe,  Boston  Mass. 

"This  volume  is  the  result  of  deep  research, 
much  study,  an  indefinite  amount  of  thought, 
coupled  with  a  primary  understanding  of  the  sub- 
ject acquired  through  years  of  labor.  It  is  above 
else  a  book  for  the  thinker,  a  volume  that  must 
be  studied  and  analyzed  before  it's  true  worth  be- 
comes manifest." — The  Reporter,  Waterloo,  lov/a. 

"A  very  lucid  exposition  of  the  theory  of  evo- 
lution, of  spiritual  truths,  and  the  attainment  of 
the  higher  self.  The  author  sees  clearly  the 
need  of  the  individual  for  a  practical  creed  and  a 
more  defmite  knowledge  of  soul  forces.  It  is  a 
plea  for  the  consciousness  of  soul  and  a  spiritual 
understanding  of  self.  It  is  a^well  written  and 
clear  analysis  of  a  subject  that  is  steadily  gaining 
in  interest." — Miscellaneous. 

"A  philosophical  work  of  great  value,  teaching 
how  to  become  conscious  of  one's  soul,  and  by 
cultivating  morality  and  things  spiritual,  to  de- 
velope  all  the  highest  capablities  of  self.  Gently 
but  firmly  he  leads  the  reader  up  the  steps  of 
self-knowledge.  To  the  mJnd  who  strives  to 
understand,  there  first  comes  inspiration,  and  then, 


PSYCHIC C    O    N    T    R    O    L^ 

an  all  pervading  peace.  No  one  should  attempt 
to  study  more  than  one  chapter  at  a  sitting,  for 
the  pages  are  literally  packed  with  meaning,  which 
is  best  assimilated  by  degrees.  The  word  paint- 
ing is  rarely  beautiful." — The  Times-Union,  Al- 
bany, N.  Y. 

^'Table-turning,  thought  reading,  crystal  gazing, 
clairvoyance,  ghost-raising  and  such  like  diver- 
sions are  at  present  so  much  in  favor  with  the 
frivolous  that  it  may  be  proper  to  offer  a  word 
of  warning  about  iMr.  Walter  Winston  Kenil- 
worth's  book,  Psychic  Control  Through  Self- 
Knoidcdgc,  and  those  who  hope  to  find  any  in- 
formation here  about  the  transference  of  thoughts 
or  the  shifting  of  furniture  will  be  grievously  dis- 
appointed. By  psychic  control  Mr.  Kenihvorth 
means  the  control  of  desires  with  the  amelioration 
of  conduct  and  the  refinement  of  physical  and 
mental  vibration." — The  Evening  Sun,  New  York. 

_  *'This  is  a  very  interesting,  instructive  and  up- 
lifting work,_  written  in  the  author's  well  known 
style.  All  will  find  some  new  truth  in  this  book, 
and  there  are  none  but  whom  will  receive  in- 
struction and  benefit." — Voice  of  the  Magi. 

*Tn  the  author's  power  to  perceive  relations,  to 
<yrasp  the  occult  truth  embodied  in  an  object  or  a 
phenomenon,  to  recognize  truths  pertaining  to  the 
unseen  realm  and  to  the  inner  life,  and  to  lay  the 
same  before  others  with  clearness,  originality  and 
convincing  power,  one  is  continually  reminded  of 
Emerson.  One  closes  it  marveling 'at  the  heights 
which  a  soul  has  reached  that  can  put  forth  a 
work  like  this."— L.  Frances  Estes  \x\  The  Oc- 
cident, 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

■n..s  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below  or 
on  the  date  to  which  renewfd  '  °' 

R^newedbool^  are  subjea  to  immediate  recaU 


UBRAKY   USHh 


MAvmgBi — 


MAY  1 1  1987  6  5 


— APRS     IQCGGG 


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*i|*JL 


LD  21A-50W-12/60 
(B6.221sl0)476E 


'  -^  /  "^.      i.  General  Library 

Umversitv  nf  r^l.-f^-^:- 


270780 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALJFORNIA  LIBRARY 


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